Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod v. FCC was a 1998 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case involving the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the Fifth Amendment. The FCC claimed that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod had violated the FCC's Equal Employment Opportunity requirements by not hiring enough minorities/women and by requiring a knowledge of Lutheran doctrine in order to be hired to work at its two FM and AM radio stations located in Clayton, Missouri. History The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod first began broadcasting religious content on the radio in 1924 on KFUO, which is a daytime non-profit AM station located on the Concordia Seminary campus grounds in Clayton, Missouri. KFUO was founded by Richard Kretzschmar, John Fritz and Dr. Walter A. Maier. It is the nation's longest running religious radio station. They later added a full-time commercial broadcast station in 1948, still with a religious focus, KFUO-FM. According to the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, the stations "have been dedicated to the task of carrying out in their way the Great Commission which Christ gave to His Church, to preach the Gospel to every creature and to nurture and serve the people in a variety of ways." Background In May 1978 the FCC adopted its Statement of Policy on Minority Ownership of Broadcasting Facilities, 68 FCC 2d 979. This policy outlined two elements of a minority ownership policy: 1) The Commission pledged to consider minority ownership as one factor in comparative proceedings for new licenses. In comparing mutually exclusive applications for new radio or television broadcast stations, it looked first at six factors, but under the new policy, it must consider minority ownership and participation in management as a "plus" to be weighed together with the other six factors. 2) The FCC outlined a plan to increase minority opportunities to receive reassigned and transferred licenses through the "distress sale" policy. This policy would allow a broadcaster whose license had been designated for a revocation hearing, or whose renewal application had been designated for hearing, to assign the license to an FCC-approved minority enterprise. Congress and the FCC selected these minority ownership policies to promote program diversity, which they saw as an important governmental objective. In addition, they would serve as a constitutional basis for the preference policies. The FCC adopted these policies in an attempt to satisfy its obligation under the Communications Act of 1934 to promote diversification