The National Religious Broadcasters have asked the United States Supreme Court to stop the implementation of a rate system that would reportedly force noncommercial religious webcasters to pay more to convey religious messages than secular entities.
The NRB filed a petition for a writ of certiorari last Friday to the Supreme Court, claiming that the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board “adopted rates requiring noncommercial religious webcasters to pay over 18 times the secular NPR-webcaster rate to communicate religious messages to listeners above a modest 218-average listener threshold.”
“More than 25 years after Congress established a webcasting statutory license, this Court has yet to weigh in on the Board’s and D.C. Circuit’s rate-setting decisions,” stated the petition.
“Absent this Court’s course correction, the Board is likely to continue to disregard [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] and the First Amendment in its rate-setting determinations.”