Television networks need no longer fear being fined when someone lets slip a curse word on air.

A federal appellate court yesterday found that the Federal Communications Commission could not take action against broadcasters for isolated, unscripted curse words.

Ruling in favor of Fox, NBC, and CBS, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FCC gave no justifiable explanation for parting in recent years with a decades-old policy of not seeking enforcement action against the networks for “fleeting expletives.”

The 2–1 ruling is a significant victory for the networks, which had faced a $325,000 fine for each violation under the new policy.

The ruling comes in one of the broadest challenges in years to the FCC’s authority to define indecency and police it on the airwaves.

The stakes in the case were high, according to both sides. The networks had warned that fining unscripted curses threatened to end live television, while the FCC said parents should be able to expect that their children could watch network television without being exposed to profanity.

While the 2nd Circuit’s decision protects networks only from being fined for isolated, unscripted curses, the court hinted that it would be willing at some future date to cut more deeply into the FCC’s authority to police profanity. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that the FCC could proscribe profanity on network television and radio, partly on the grounds that such broadcasts are “uniquely accessible to children.”

In the decision yesterday, written by Judge Rosemary Pooler, the court questioned whether that reasoning is relevant in the era of cable television and the Internet, to which FCC rules do not apply. In the future, broadcast television may deserve more First Amendment protection than it currently receives, Judge Pooler, who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, wrote.

“We would be remiss not to observe that it is increasingly difficult to describe the broadcast media as uniquely pervasive and uniquely accessible to children, and at some point in the future, strict scrutiny may properly apply in the context of regulating broadcast television,” the decision said. Judge Pooler also pointed out that the V-chip, which can block certain programming, may have changed the need for the FCC to have such broad power to regulate indecency.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision and continue to believe that the government regulation of content serves no purpose other than to chill artistic expression in violation of the First Amendment,” Fox Broadcasting said in a statement.

The case before the court stemmed from Fox’s broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003. Receiving an award in 2002, Cher cursed. The following year, in presenting an award, the reality television personality Nicole Richie cursed twice.

The FCC had argued that the curse words used by both women are invariably indecent because they always connote a sexual or excretory function. The court rejected that reasoning.

“This defies any commonsense understanding of these words, which, as the general public well knows, are often used in everyday conversation, without any ‘Sexual or excretory’ meaning,” Judge Pooler wrote.

In a statement sent via e-mail, the chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, said, “It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding” that a certain curse word does not invoke a sexual connotation.

The effect of the ruling is likely to be quite limited, a former FCC commissioner, Gloria Tristani, said. The ruling will require the FCC to do “a case by case analysis” before ruling that a specific use of profanity is indecent, Ms. Tristani, of Spiegel & McDiarmid, said. “The one message here is that you have to look at the context.”

Judge Pierre Peter Hall, who was nominated to the bench by President Bush, also signed the majority opinion. In a dissent, Judge Pierre Leval said the FCC was entitled to change its rules to police even isolated curse words.

“An agency is free to change its standards,” Judge Leval, who was nominated to the 2nd Circuit bench by President Clinton, wrote. “Although one can reasonably disagree with the Commission’s new position, its explanation — at least with respect to the F-Word — is not irrational, arbitrary, or capricious.”

Judge Leval pointed out that the FCC had set limits to its enforcement policy, including not seeking enforcement against news programs. If forced to wager, Judge Leval wrote that he would bet that the majority’s ruling would encourage additional cursing on network broadcasts.