The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday accepted a bid by the Federal Communications Commission to overturn a Fox Television indecency case the agency lost in lower courts against News Corp., the Wall Street Journal reports

The appeal pits News Corp., ABC and CBS Corp. against the FCC. The U.S. solicitor general had weighed in on the side of the commission. ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co. News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

The lawsuit involves brief incidents where expletives were used on two consecutive years of “The Billboard Music Awards.” Previously, the FCC policy had been that one-off instances of profanity didn’t violate its indecency standards. It then pursued enforcement action against News Corp. after the shows were broadcast in 2002 and 2003.

Last June, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York told the commission to go back and rethink its approach on the indecency policy. This prompted Kevin Martin, the agency’s Republican chairman, to issue an angry statement decrying the judgment.

CBS is awaiting a decision by the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, in a separate challenge to an FCC fine over the Super Bowl half time show in 2004, when a shot of Janet Jackson’s breast was briefly shown.

Recently ABC said it was appealing a fine imposed by the FCC over a five-year-old episode of NYPD Blue, in which one of the female stars of the show was shown naked from behind.

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