By Camille T. Taiara

After a year and a half of waiting, San Francisco Liberation Radio has heard from the U.S. District Court in its case against the Federal Communications Commission – and the news isn't good.

The station – San Francisco's longest-running "pirate" operation – lost all its equipment when more than a dozen U.S. marshals and FCC and San Francisco Police Department officers appeared at Charlotte Hatch and Jim Hatch's Castro District residence, the station's most recent home, on Oct. 15, 2003, equipped with a warrant and a battering ram (see "Liberation Radio Seized," 10/22/03).

The resolute rabble-rousers challenged the FCC's right to seize their equipment with no prior notice – arguing that they should've been granted the right to be heard by a judge before the government could confiscate their property.

In an opinion issued March 14, Judge Susan Illston came down on the side of the feds. But the battle isn't over.

"We're disappointed, but we're not surprised," SFLR attorney Mark Vermeulen told the Bay Guardian, explaining that SFLR launched the case expecting to take it to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "The District Court's hands were tied, to an extent.... Courts of Appeals have more leverage in establishing new precedents."

To obtain its warrant behind closed doors, the FCC relied on a subsection of a federal law enacted by Congress to enable the government to seize property from drug dealers. "We're saying that rule is improper when it's applied to broadcasters," Vermeulen explained. "It's improper when it's applied to activity that implicates the First Amendment.... The Constitution would override the statute."

Among the issues SFLR would like to take up is the FCC's ban on granting licenses to anyone who broadcast illegally and failed to stop voluntarily after Feb. 26, 1999 (four weeks after the commission announced it would create a low-power FM licensing procedure), or within 24 hours of being ordered to stop broadcasting by the FCC.

"This is the only instance we've seen where entities are banned for life from being involved in broadcasting, and we're saying there's no rational basis for that," Vermeulen told us. "These very people – the people that are barred for life – were instrumental in bringing about changes so that LPFM is now on the dial, as a legal matter.... That would be like banning Rosa Parks from riding in the front of the bus because she violated the law when it was still illegal [for African Americans] to ride in the front of the bus."

SFLR has until May 10 to file a notice of appeal. If an appeal were successful, it would undercut the FCC's favored method for shutting down LPFM stations across the country. In the meantime, "the real losers here are the San Francisco public because they were receiving information, receiving broadcasting that isn't available elsewhere on the dial," Vermeulen said.

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