The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has dismissed the "Petition to Deny" a construction permit awarded to a Catholic Church in Ketchum, Idaho.  The petition was filed by the Idaho Board of Education that had also filed an application for a non-commerical radio station during a filing window in November of 2021.  The petition filed by the school board claimed that the church known as the Our Lady of the Snows Foundation, Inc had not been incorporated until the year 2000 and that as such, the FCC could not award the church with points awarded for local diversity of ownership and that the church could not qualify as a non-profit with a local presence in the community for at least two years.  The decision by the FCC however is not in agreement with the petition.

The church had filed an opposition to the Idaho Board of Education's claims in fact stating it had a local presence in the community for decades.  The incorporation document is only a piece of how the FCC could determine established local presence.  Most churches have always been tax exempt organizations by their nature and not all of them have filed for formal recognition with either the State or national government.  In this case however, Our Lady of the Snow also pointed out that the Idaho Board of Education did not even have sufficient standing to bring an action to go against the Church's application based on uncurable defects that existing in the State's own application.  That defect was based on an inability for the proposed State facility to cover the intended community, which makes the Church's application a singleton and not mutually exclusive with the State of Idaho.

The Construction Permit has now been offcially issued to the church as of the 25th of April clearing the way to establish a new local non-commecial radio station from a transmitter located on Bald Mountain an at the frequency of  89.3 Mhz serving Ketcum, Idaho as its official community of license.   The Idaho school board had been looking to get an additional license to add to its huge number of radio stations throughout Idaho.  That's not going to work out for them in Ketchum, however.