Two Republican attorneys general are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to shut down a 12-state antitrust lawsuit targeting Paramount Skydance's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing California and its allies have no right to veto a deal the federal government already cleared.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen filed a proposed complaint and a motion to expedite at the Supreme Court, invoking the court's exclusive original jurisdiction over disputes between states. Their petition names California and 11 other states as defendants: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. The two attorneys general want the court to declare the merger lawful under federal antitrust law and to prohibit the 12 states from continuing their case in the Northern District of California, as the Washington Examiner first reported.
The filing frames the dispute as a constitutional clash between sovereign states, not a routine antitrust case. Iowa and Montana's proposed complaint puts it bluntly:
"Twelve states have effectively vetoed a transaction that the other thirty-eight, and the United States, declined to challenge."
That line captures the core of the argument. The Department of Justice closed its own investigation into the merger in June without filing a challenge. DOJ went further, stating the deal was likely to increase competition. Regulators in the European Union, United Kingdom, China, Canada, Mexico, and numerous other jurisdictions also cleared the transaction. Yet California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, led a coalition of states that sued Paramount in July and obtained a temporary restraining order preventing the companies from completing the merger until next year.
Bird laid out her case in an op-ed published Tuesday in the Daily Wire, framing the fight as one state trying to impose its regulatory preferences on the entire nation:
"California is once again trying to be the country's regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country. That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court."
Bird argued the merger benefits the economy and consumers. She denied there was any monopoly problem with the deal. The states suing Paramount contend the combined company would control roughly 27 percent of the market for distributing widely released theatrical films and licensing basic cable channels, a figure the plaintiff states cite in their lawsuit but that Bird and Knudsen clearly view as insufficient grounds for blocking the transaction.
The Supreme Court has not yet publicly responded to the filing. Iowa and Montana asked the court to require the 12 defendant states to respond by September 15 and to consider the dispute at its October 9 conference. The urgency is real: a trial in the California case is not scheduled until March 2027, and every day the merger sits incomplete costs real money.
Beginning in October, Paramount is contractually obligated to pay Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approximately $7 million per day that the transaction remains incomplete. Iowa and Montana's motion to expedite cited the mounting costs directly.
"Mergers do not freeze well. The corporate officers, employees, suppliers, and contractors at Paramount and Warner Bros. are mired in uncertainty."
That uncertainty extends beyond corporate boardrooms. The restraining order means jobs, contracts, and business plans across the entertainment industry remain in limbo. A Los Angeles County economic report raised concerns about mass layoffs and job cuts that could result from the merger, but the irony is that the legal limbo itself creates its own form of economic damage, with neither company able to plan or invest with confidence while the case drags on.
The Supreme Court's willingness to take up interstate disputes has drawn attention in recent terms. The high court's docket increasingly features cases where states clash over federal policy and constitutional authority, from election-law disputes to executive power questions.
Any hope of a negotiated resolution took a hit this week. California AG Bonta canceled a settlement meeting with Paramount representatives that had been scheduled for Monday. Bonta accused the company of leaking details from a prior meeting to the press, calling it a "lack of good faith" on Paramount's part.
Paramount denied leaking any information about the settlement discussions and maintained it remains committed to acting in good faith as the lawsuit proceeds. No follow-up settlement meeting has been scheduled.
The breakdown in talks makes the Supreme Court filing even more consequential. If the justices decline to intervene, the case stays in a California federal courtroom until at least March 2027, with the meter running at $7 million a day and no settlement in sight. Federal courts across the country have been active in shaping major policy outcomes, from gun regulations to immigration enforcement.
The legal fight has also opened a second front in Arizona. Paramount has asked the court to require the 12 plaintiff states to post a $1.88 billion bond, a request that caught the attention of Arizona state Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican who is running to replace Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Petersen called for a public hearing on the potential taxpayer exposure if a judge grants Paramount's bond request. He said Mayes should explain whether state money could be at risk and whether legislative approval would be required before Arizona taxpayers are put on the hook. The Washington Examiner first reported Petersen's push for a hearing last week.
That question, who pays if the states lose, is the kind of practical concern that rarely surfaces in the press releases announcing ambitious multistate lawsuits. Attorneys general across the country have grown accustomed to filing high-profile legal challenges without much scrutiny of the downside risk to their own taxpayers. In an era when state-level fights over judicial power are intensifying, Petersen's demand for transparency is a welcome departure.
The broader pattern is familiar. A handful of progressive attorneys general, led by California, file a lawsuit to block a transaction or policy they dislike. The federal government has already reviewed the matter and declined to act. But the state-level case proceeds anyway, imposing costs, uncertainty, and delay on private parties who have no realistic way to recover the damage if the lawsuit ultimately fails.
Iowa and Montana are betting the Supreme Court will see this case the same way. Their filing argues that when 12 states use the courts to override a decision the other 38 states and the federal government made, or chose not to make, the result is an interstate dispute that only the nation's highest court can resolve. Courts at every level have been drawn into protracted policy battles that stretch well beyond their traditional role.
Whether the justices agree to hear the case remains an open question. The Supreme Court exercises original jurisdiction sparingly, and not every interstate dispute clears the bar. But the stakes, a $111 billion merger, $7 million a day in penalties, thousands of jobs, and the question of whether a minority of states can functionally regulate the national economy, make this filing harder to ignore than most.
If California wants to run the country's merger policy from Sacramento, it ought to at least have to defend that ambition in the one courtroom the Constitution designed for exactly this kind of fight.