High Court freezes broadcasting law, orders answers on legislative defects

The conditional order gives the respondents until January 7, 2027, to file their responses. The case will be heard by an expanded panel of nine justices, while the freeze will remain in place until further notice.

The court said it would first examine the alleged flaws in the law’s passage. It did not issue a conditional order concerning the substance of the law’s provisions at this stage, but it explicitly preserved the parties’ arguments on those issues.

The justices said the arguments concerning the legislative process appeared to raise weighty questions requiring examination.

The court also said the government had chosen not to respond to the requests for an interim freeze despite being given time to do so. The justices decided those requests on the written submissions without a further oral hearing.

The law establishes a unified broadcasting regulator intended to replace the Second Authority for Television and Radio and the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council.

Attorney Yaniv Goldberg, head of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel’s Economic Division, welcomed the decision.

“A proper legislative process is intended to ensure that decisions affecting the information available to every citizen are made transparently, following professional review and genuine debate,” he said.

In September, Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara asked the court to freeze the entire law until it rules on petitions challenging it.

Key parts of the reform had reached the Knesset without the required professional review and were pushed through a committee effectively controlled by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, she told the court.

The law could trigger business and ownership changes that would be difficult to reverse if the court later strikes it down, Baharav-Miara said.

In July, Justice Ofer Grosskopf temporarily froze the provisions of the reform that were due to take effect upon the law’s publication. He declined at that stage to suspend it in full. Most of the reform was scheduled to enter into force two years after publication.

The provisions initially frozen included the establishment of a search committee to recommend candidates for the new regulator.

Under the law, the committee would be chaired by the Communications Ministry director-general and include representatives of the Regulation Authority, Finance Ministry, Competition Authority, and academia.

It would recommend candidates for six public positions on the new nine-member regulatory council, who would then be appointed by the communications minister. The council’s three remaining members would be civil servants representing the Communications Ministry and the relevant government regulators.

Karhi and supporters of the reform have said the existing regulatory system restricts competition and is unsuited to the modern media market.

The Knesset passed the law by a 53-48 vote on July 16, completing one of Karhi’s central legislative initiatives shortly before the Knesset’s dissolution.