ABSTRACT
In Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, the US Supreme Court held that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could place a time-frame restriction on the radio broadcasting of nonobscene speech without violating the rights of free speech and press provided in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The case began with an afternoon broadcast of George Carlin's "seven dirty words" monologue by WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation radio station. After the federal appellate court reversed the FCC decision, a deeply divided US Supreme Court upheld the agency, but its five-four decision did not present a majority on the First Amendment issue. Justice John Paul Steven's three-justice plurality opinion concluded that the indecent speech had limited social value and for that reason was at the periphery of the First Amendment in a second constitutional tier where its protection would vary according to its context.
