On Nov. 2, 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit reaffirmed and largely readopted its 2008 decision rejecting the $550,000 forfeiture and finding of indecency violation levied against CBS for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. The appeal involved the live broadcast of the show, which culminated in an unscripted nine-sixteenth-second exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast.

The 3rd Circuit previously had held the FCC arbitrarily and capriciously departed from a prior policy of excepting fleeting broadcast material from the scope of actionable indecency, and that the agency could not impose strict liability on CBS, or hold it liable for conduct of Jackson and Timberlake, who were independent contractors not CBS employees. The 3rd Circuit reexamined that decision after the FCC appealed to the Supreme Court, which vacated the 3rd Circuit’s original decision and ordered it to decide whether the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in FCC v. Fox Television Stations required it to reconsider its decision. In Fox, the Court held the FCC had not acted arbitrarily and capriciously in changing its indecency policy to enforce the law against broadcasts of “fleeting expletives.”

In the remand proceeding, the 3rd Circuit reaffirmed its earlier decision to invalidate the fine imposed on CBS. It held that, while the FCC had recognized it was changing its policy that made fleeting expletives non-actionable, the Commission failed in the Super Bowl case to acknowledge the prior policy even existed, or to explain its departure from that position. The court granted the CBS petition for review in full, and vacated the FCC’s decision.