MUMBAI: The US Supreme Court has thrown out government sanctions against networks that aired fleeting profanity and nudity, saying regulators didn?t provide fair notice that they were taking a tougher stance.

The Supreme Court has said that the US media watchdog Federal Communications Commission didn?t give Fox and ABC fair notice before punishing them for broadcasting expletives and scenes of nudity almost a decade ago.

There were two Fox broadcasts of the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards, in which Cher and Nicole Richie both used expletives that were being broadcast by the network, and a 2003 episode of ABC?s NYPD Blue in which an exposed buttocks and the side of an exposed breast were shown to audience.

But the ruling fell short of what the broadcasters wanted. They had asked the court to invalidate the FCC?s policy as being unconstitutionally vague and to overturn decades-old rulings that subject over-the-air programming to stricter rules than cable or satellite shows.

The FCC has to tackle more than a million indecency complaints that have piled up at its doorstep since the litigation began. The FCC also must decide whether to stick with a tough standard for policing the airwaves set during the George W. Bush administration.

Broadcasters, meanwhile, had hoped for a more definitive victory that would have curtailed the government?s authority to enforce indecency rules.