The broadcast networks will continue to be in deep #%^* if they broadcast a fleeting expletive.

So ruled the Supreme Court yesterday in its first broadcast indecency case in three decades, upholding the position of the Federal Communications Commission on punishing networks for fleeting expletives uttered on television and overturning a lower court's decision.

The justices did not rule on the constitutionality of the FCC’s position but rather deemed the agency’s explanation for its actions sufficient.

A lower court had struck down an FCC fine levied on Fox for two expletives aired during consecutive Billboard Awards specials earlier this decade, ruling that the decisions were “arbitrary and capricious.”

The Supremes didn’t see it that way, ruling 5-4 in favor of the FCC. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion, said, “The commission could reasonably conclude that the pervasiveness of foul language, and the coarsening of public entertainment in other media such as cable, justify more stringent regulation of broadcast programs so as to give conscientious parents a relatively safe haven for their children.”

The FCC’s actions were a reversal of its pre-2004 policy, which generally let fleeting expletives slide while punishing more overt violations of indecency standards.

But following Janet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl nipple exposure, Washington was swept up in the anti-indecency backlash, and the FCC began to crack down on even fleeting uses of swear words on television.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, said that the FCC was troubling itself with instances that did not meet the standards for indecency, i.e., words referring directly to sexual or excretory functions.

“It is ironic, to say the least,” Stevens wrote, “that while the FCC patrols the airwaves for words that have a tenuous relationship with sex or excrement, commercials broadcast during prime-time hours frequently ask viewers whether they are battling erectile dysfunction or are having trouble going to the bathroom.”