The High Court has rejected a request by the National Religious Broadcasters to halt the implementation of a rate system that reportedly forces noncommercial religious webcasters to pay more to promote religious messages than secular entities.
The refusal allows an earlier ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in favor of the new rate system to stand.
NRB filed suit against the Copyright Royalty Board over their issuing a Final Determination for rates and terms for webcasters that is in effect from 2021-2025, arguing that the standard unfairly treated religious webcasters.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit that specializes in religious freedom cases, helped to represent NRB.
ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch said in a statement earlier this year that he believed the board was “violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”
“The government punishes noncommercial religious broadcasters by making them pay a license fee more than 18 times higher than NPR.”
The panel ruled that the board had “appropriately exercised its discretion in declining to set a separate, lower rate for simulcasters” and “reasonably declined” arguments “supporting a separate rate for simulcasters.”