[SFDXA] FCC Invokes “Red Light Rule” in Denying K1MAN License Renewal Application

[Bill]

    FCC Invokes “Red Light Rule” in Denying K1MAN License Renewal
    Application

07/02/2014

The curious Amateur Radio enforcement case of Glenn Baxter, now 
ex-K1MAN, of Belgrade Lakes, Maine, appears to winding down and may be 
at an end. The FCC dismissed Baxter’s long-standing license renewal 
application on June 23, invoking its “Red Light Rule,” which gives the 
Commission authority to turn down a pending application if the applicant 
has an unpaid fine on the books. Baxter was liable for a $10,000 FCC 
forfeiture stemming from violations over a period extending back several 
years.

“Anyone filing an application [who] is found to be delinquent in debt 
owed to the FCC and who fails to pay the debt in full or make other 
satisfactory arrangements in a timely manner will have their application 
dismissed,” said the */Notice of Dismissal/* 
<http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/letterPdf/LetterPdfController?applId=3052669&letterVersionId=110&autoLetterId=1638893&letterCode=DI&radioServiceCode=HA&op=LetterPdf&letterTo=L> 
appended to Baxter’s Universal Licensing System (ULS) file. “Because you 
have failed to resolve this matter timely, your application is hereby 
dismissed.”

The FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau dismissed Baxter’s 2005 
renewal application “without prejudice,” which means that if Baxter 
wants to be licensed again, he must file a new application — and the FCC 
could again invoke its Red Light Rule. Baxter’s license expired in 
October of 2005, but FCC rules gave him the authority to continue 
operating while his renewal application was pending. He lost that 
privilege effective on June 23.

“If you are currently operating under authority provided by the 
Commission’s rules based on your submission of [a renewal] application, 
you must immediately cease operation until such time as you come into 
compliance with the rules,” the dismissal letter said.

The legal history in the case is extensive. In 2011, the FCC issued a 
*/Hearing Designation Order/* 
<http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0112/DA-11-58A1.pdf> 
to determine, among other things, if Baxter’s Amateur Radio license 
should be renewed. According to the /Order/, “Baxter has apparently 
willfully and repeatedly engaged in unlawful Commission-related 
activities, including causing interference to ongoing communications of 
other amateur stations, transmitting communications in which he had a 
pecuniary interest, failing to file requested information pursuant to an 
Enforcement Bureau directive, engaging in broadcasting without 
communicating with any particular station, and failing to exercise 
control of his station.”

In 2012, On January 10, the US District Court for the State of Maine 
issued a ruling in the FCC’s lawsuit to collect Baxter’s fine, initially 
$21,000. In writing for the Court, Chief US District Judge John A. 
Woodcock Jr agreed with the FCC on the first two counts — willful or 
repeated failure to respond to FCC requests for information, and willful 
or malicious interference — and granted summary judgments to the FCC in 
the amounts of $3000 and $7000, respectively. The Court declined to rule 
on the third issue —communications in which an amateur station licensee 
or control operator has a pecuniary interest — asserting that issues of 
material fact remained to be litigated in the Court.

Earlier this month, in a seeming game of “hot potato,” FCC Chief 
Administrative Law Judge Richard L. Sippel turned down an FCC 
Enforcement Bureau request that he dismiss Baxter’s renewal application 
with prejudice. The Enforcement Bureau filed a /Request for Dismissal of 
Application and Termination of Proceeding/ in March of this year.

“Mr Baxter did not submit a substantive opposition to the /Request,/” 
Sippel wrote in his June 20 */Order/* 
<http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0623/FCC-14M-20A1.pdf>. 
While Sippel said the Bureau made a “convincing” case for him to drop 
the other regulatory shoe in the Baxter case and end the matter, he said 
he did not have that broad authority and turned the matter back to the 
Enforcement Bureau, which dismissed Baxter’s application 4 days later.

Sippel said that upon dismissal of Baxter’s application “by appropriate 
authority,” he would terminate the proceeding upon the Enforcement 
Bureau’s motion.

http://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-invokes-red-light-rule-in-denying-k1man-license-renewal-application