Editor’s Note: KSUT reports on itself as it does any other institution. No administrative staff or governance official reviewed this story before publication.
NPR and three Colorado-based public radio organizations, including KSUT, sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its executive order ending federal funding for NPR and PBS.
Executive Order 14290, issued on May 1, demands that the Corporation For Public Broadcasting stop funding NPR and PBS and that local stations cease using their federal funding to pay for network programming.
NPR, KSUT Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and Colorado Public Radio filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The plaintiffs argue that the executive order is unconstitutional, a First Amendment violation, and retaliatory. The suit notes that President Donald Trump has claimed public broadcasting is biased against him.
“This is not about politics — it is about principle,” reads a joint statement released Tuesday morning from KSUT, CPR, and Aspen Public Radio. “When the government tries to limit press freedom or control the flow of information, we have not only the right, but the obligation, to speak out and defend our rights that make independent journalism possible.”
The lawsuit also references the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which provides for public media free from government control.
“The order is unlawful in multiple ways,” says Tuesday’s legal filing. “It flatly contravenes statutes duly enacted by Congress and violates the separation of powers and the spending clause by disregarding Congress’s express commands. It also violates the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press.”
Read the lawsuit (Document Cloud)
The suit also calls Trump’s executive order “textbook retaliation.” The president has made no secret of his disdain for public broadcasting. On his Truth Social account last year, he called it a “LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE.”
“It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit says. “But this wolf comes as a wolf. The order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not 'fair, accurate, or unbiased.”
The “wolf” line comes from late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who included it in his dissent in a 1988 SCOTUS decision.
“The order refers to NPR programming as biased, and it’s quite clear that it is motivated as retaliation for what the administration considers unflattering news coverage,” said Steve Zansberg, who is the lead attorney for the Colorado stations and is providing them with pro bono representation. “That's why it's so clearly a violation of the First Amendment.”
Related link: Attorney Steve Zansberg talks about the lawsuit
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields responded to the suit on Tuesday: "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers' dime. Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective."
NPR: Station plaintiffs selected for the diversity of the communities they represent
One detail of Tuesday’s lawsuit puzzled some onlookers: Out of 246 NPR stations nationwide, how did all three plaintiffs come from the same state?
NPR CEO Katherine Maher was asked that by the network’s Mary Louise Kelly in an interview that aired on All Things Considered Tuesday. Maher said it wasn’t intentional.
“We were looking for stations that represented an urban area, rural areas, and perhaps a more diverse region,” Maher told Kelly. “In the case of KSUT, that is a station that was created as a tribal station by the Southern Ute Tribe. Those stations represent the diversity that public radio offers in terms of the communities that it serves.”
Editor's note: While KSUT was founded to serve members of the Southern Ute Tribe, the station is an independent non-profit organization and not licensed to the Tribe.
The plaintiffs range from large to small. CPR is a Denver-based network with three “formats,” a large newsroom, and a statewide reach. Aspen Public Radio serves a largely rural audience in the Roaring Fork Valley. KSUT serves Native American listeners from four tribes and non-Natives in the Four Corners region. All three organizations are NPR member stations and receive partial funding from CPB.
For KSUT, that’s about $333,000 a year—19% of its annual budget. Aspen Public Radio gets $210,000, or 10.8% of its budget. CPR receives $1.4 million, or 6% of its budget. Stations use the funding to pay for programming, local journalism, outreach, and supporting the emergency alert system, among other things.
An April 18 post from KSUT explained that the loss of CPB funding “...would very likely result in immediate and significant impacts on our ability to provide essential services, including the production of local and regional news and music programming, our ability to purchase national programming, maintain broadcast infrastructure and our membership in collaborations...”
It would, presumably, affect the other plaintiffs in the same way. For its part, NPR says losing direct funding would be “catastrophic” and threaten news production and its Public Radio Satellite System, which distributes the network and other public radio program producers nationwide.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss has been assigned the case in Tuesday's lawsuit. He’s the same judge overseeing a case stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) against Trump.
KSUT Executive Director Tami Graham and the station’s board of directors would not comment about Tuesday's lawsuit, citing active litigation.
