Paramount-WBD Antitrust Suit Heads To Supreme Court In Red State Vs. Blue State Showdown Over $111B Merger

UPDATED 8:03 AM: Iowa and Montana are going to the Supreme Court to put a halt on antitrust efforts to prevent the $111 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery.

This case is about the legal limits on politicized antitrust enforcement by a small handful of states seeking to enjoin a $110 billion merger that the United States, most American states, and competition regulators worldwide have cleared,” insists the two red states in their Motion for Leave to File a Bill of Complaint against the 12 blue state led by Golden State AG and MAGA anti-poster boy Rob Bonta.

After threats Tuesday in an op-ed by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, the Hawkeye State and the Treasure State filed paperwork with the High Court late last night – and they want a fast response.

“Expedited consideration now will alleviate the need for exceedingly hasty action later,” they state of the proposed stoppage of a ParaBros combo pending the initial litigation of July 13. “Mergers do not freeze well.”

In fact, barely letting the situation sit on ice at all, Iowa and Montana are looking at a deadline of September 15 to be exact.

That is two weeks before the $7 million a day ticking fee paid to WBD shareholders kicks in for the David Ellison-run Para. “It is no great burden to ask Defendant States to file their response on an accelerated timeline,” today’s filing asserts, citing Supreme Court Rule 21. 

“The case is not an emergency yet, but the deadline for the merger is June 2027, and there would be little hope of resolving the case by then if a decision on hearing it were made in January,” the filing adds. “That is especially so if the Court first addresses the threshold question of whether it even has discretion to deny audience on the merits for cases within its original and exclusive jurisdiction.”

Awaiting a reaction from the conservative majority SCOTUS, which could reject or slow walk the request, Iowa and Montana’s action against the “State of Arizona, State of California, State of Colorado, State of Connecticut, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, State of Minnesota, State of Nevada, State of New Jersey, State of New Mexico, State of New York, State of Oregon, and State of Washington” is a roll of the dice for all concerned.

If Iowa and Montana get their wish list and an early October hearing takes place (big ifs) it is very unlikely there would be any ruling from SCOTUS before late spring or early summer. A timeline that wouldn’t really be very helpful a Paramount that is looking at a June 4, 2027 expiration date on the merger if they don’t close.

Also, SCOTUS sign-offs on such requests are not rare for the Roberts court, but they aren’t common either.

Still, perhaps playing to their real audience, the Iowa and Montana motion also jumps into defending the Ellisons’ bottom line – as Bird did in her August 25 Daily Wire op-ed.

Blasting the blue states for running counter to a merger approved by 67 jurisdictions worldwide and seemingly fast-tracked by Donald Trump’s DOJ,, the motion notes: “The costs are not limited to the companies themselves. Defendant States’ suit has injected uncertainty into every company that does business with Paramount or Warner Bros. Suppliers and other counterparties cannot make investment choices without knowing who the real decision maker is and whether the business relationship has a future once the deal closes (or does not close).”

There has been no full-on response yet from Bonta, but don’t expect the media savvy CA AG to be silent too long on this latest challenge. “We are reviewing the filing and will respond as appropriate,” a spokesperson for Bonta told Deadline this AM.  

PREVIOUSLY, 10:09 PM: With friends like Iowa Attorney General  Brenna Bird, does Paramount and David Ellison really need enemies?

In an op-ed penned for the conservative Daily Wire Tuesday, the Hawkeye State ally of Donald Trump is threatening to take California to the Supreme Court. Declaring that “California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator,” Bird wants to stop the antitrust lawsuit from the Golden State, New York and 10 other states against Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery.

“Just like California should keep its hands off America’s bacon, California needs to understand that it doesn’t get to decide what Americans can choose to watch or stream,” the reelection-seeking Bird states of the state and its AG Rob Bonta.

“If California believes a transaction that 68 regulators approved is nevertheless illegal, it is free to make that argument,” she notes, lamenting the $7 million a day ticking fee and more Paramount will have to start paying WBD shareholders starting October 1. “But it should make it in the one court with the authority to bind all of us, and it should make it now, before the bill for the delay comes due,” Bird claps, leaving out any reference to the Empire State’s Letitia James and other AGs.

Yet, for all her rallying to the ParaBros cause, as well as some variations on what Bonta and gang are actually alleging in the March 2, 2027 trial-starting case before a federal judge in Oakland, Bird doesn’t seem to have actually filed anything with SCOTUS.

It also seems hard to see how even if Iowa did take California to the conservative majority Supreme Court, how they could get a hearing before next spring or even October, with the John Roberts-led high court not back in session until October 5.

However, let’s sidestep Bird getting a perch on SCOTUS’ fast tracked interim relief docket (AKA the emergency docket or shadow docket) for a second, and look at a possible route under the provisions of Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. Even if the case fell within the “original jurisdiction” criteria and passed muster with the Justices, any ruling would likely still be drawn out — likely beyond the March 2027 trial already on the calendar. In the rare case SCOTUS picks up such a state-to-state battle, it would generally appoint a “special master’ to review the matter before getting directly on it.

All of which, like Paramount CEO Ellison accused Bonta in an August 4 NYT op-ed, makes Bird’s flag planter reek of politics.

Bird, who filed a brief in 2024 in support of the former Apprentice host’s ultimately successful bid to gain significant immunity from prosecution for acts taken while POTUS, sidesteps most of the meat of the actual antitrust suit the 12 states and the WGA are pursuing. A suit that Bonta, in an August 10 guest column for Deadline, paints as “a straight up antitrust enforcement case. One that is very cut and dry.” Instead, Bird, while giving the DOJ the benefit of the doubt, moves to blast Bonta and colleagues as “more hostile to this pro-competition merger than Europe and China.”

The ‘To Save American Movies, I’m Taking California To The Supreme Court’ entitled piece in the Ben Shapiro-founded outlet insists a ParaBros combo is good for high streaming subscription paying Iowans, competition and the movie and TV businesses. “The merger could create a company to compete: an estimated $6 billion in savings to reinvest, and a public commitment to release at least 30 movies in theaters every year. More movies mean more entertainment — and more competition means lower prices,” Bird says.

There is no mention by Bird of the $80 billion debt load a ParaBros will carry, the ongoing blame game settlement talks (or lack thereof) skirmish, nor the $1.88 billion bond Paramount desires to offset the “extraordinary losses” the court challenge poses.

Bird also makes no mention of possible layoffs or other cuts from a Paramount and WBD melding. Cuts that every such M&A deal has seen. Cuts that the likes of the WGA SAG-AFTRA and the Teamsters warn of. Cuts that reports in both late June and last week to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors warned could see thousands pink slipped, and cost the region billions in wage and hundreds of millions in tax revenue.

Touting a Hollywood that few who live here may recognize, the Iowa AG chooses echoes the findings of earlier this year from Trump’s DOJ approving the merger. To that, right now, she says “more movies are being made, and more workers are being hired.”

While seemingly concurrently stressing that a joint “Paramount+ and HBO Max together are smaller than Netflix, smaller than Disney and smaller than Amazon,” Bird also throws out there that “a successful Paramount-Warner Bros. merger would change that.” Later in the op-ed, the long time pol says: “That is the opposite of a monopoly problem.”

Singing the tunes of the growing MAGA chorus that seeks to turn Bonta into the new Nancy Pelosi punching bag, Bird asserts “California is just dreaming up something radical” to go to war with Trump and his admitted “good friends” David Ellison and his Oracle founding father Larry Ellison.

“California argues that the Department of Justice waved this through as a political favor to Paramount’s owners,” Bird wrote Tuesday in a smudging of what is actually in the July 13 filing by the coalition of blue states. “Then someone should explain how the Department managed to get approval in China, Europe, Canada, and the other 60-plus jurisdictions. When regulators in 68 jurisdictions with different laws, different politics, and no stake whatsoever in American elections all reach the same conclusion, the outlier is not the consensus.”

Again, no filing seems to have occurred today so far at the Supreme Court from Iowa or Bird. Rob Bonta and Brenna Bird’s office do share the fact that neither of them responded to Deadline’s request for comment on the Iowa AG’s threat.