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Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Montana AG Austin Knudsen filed a motion with the Supreme Court seeking to have the antitrust suit thrown out, naming California and the 11 other states party to the Paramount lawsuit as defendants. The suit was filed with the court on Tuesday, Aug. 25, according to Bird’s office. “Plaintiffs, the State of Iowa and State of Montana, respectfully move this Court for leave to file the attached Bill of Complaint to stop a politicized enforcement action that seeks to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger,” the filing says.

The development will test the Supreme Court’s interpretation of its authority to settle inter-state disputes. The U.S. Supreme Court is the court of original jurisdiction for issues that arise among states for things like boundary disputes and water rights, and it’s not clear the court will agree to hear the motion filed by Iowa and Montana regarding litigation that those states are not a party to.

Experts say the Iowa-Montana appeal is unlikely to go anywhere. “The Supreme Court is more likely to declare Donald Trump ‘litigator of the year’ than it is to block the states from enforcing their own antitrust rules,” said Erik Gordon, professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He called the Iowa-Montana action “political grandstanding.”

“There’s no valid legal basis to do this,” said Norm Eisen, an attorney who has helped lead the #BlocktheMerger campaign opposing the Paramount-WBD merger. “This new filing by Iowa turns the entire American legal system on its head. That’s why the Supreme Court is going to reject it.”

Eisen said that the states could file a friend-of-the-court brief in Oakland, but that the Supreme Court does not take up disputes between states over antitrust enforcement as a matter of original jurisdiction. “State AGs of both pirates regularly and constantly litigate antitrust matters in the federal courts,” he said. If anytime one state attorney disagreed with one of those cases and could challenge it at the Supreme Court, “they would do nothing but litigate antitrust cases up there.”

Iowa and Montana argue in their lawsuit that they have no venue other than the Supreme Court to sue California and the 11 other states to resolve “a controversy between sovereigns.”

“Twelve states have effectively vetoed a transaction that the other thirty-eight, and the United States, declined to challenge,” the Iowa and Montana motion says. “No other forum can resolve that controversy. Congress made this Court’s jurisdiction over controversies between two or more states exclusive. … This Court is not merely the best forum for this controversy. It is the only one.”

The harms of the California-led antitrust lawsuit will have an impact on Iowa and Montana’s economies, the states argue in the suit, “especially the tens of thousands of employees of Paramount and Warner Bros., as well as hundreds of millions who watch their movies, shows, and news through a variety of sources. Iowans and Montanans are being deprived of the benefits of the deal that DOJ and their own state attorneys general approved.”

“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,” Iowa and Montana’s filing says. “Plaintiff States have the same interest that Defendant States have in well-functioning markets, but believe the merger will help their economies. Because they have the same interest, they should be able to litigate the issue, but can only do so here [before the Supreme Court].”

Asked by Variety for comment, the California AG’s office said it was reviewing the filing by Iowa and Montana.

In the 56-page filing, Iowa and Montana argue the 12-state antitrust suit “burdens the national economy, harms Plaintiff States’ quasi-sovereign interests, and conflicts with the federal antitrust enforcement regime.” The Iowa and Montana suit ask the Supreme Court to “enjoin the Defendant States’ suit and decide the issue for itself, ensuring a prompt and fair adjudication of the merger.” A copy of the filing is available at this link.

In July, the 12 states led by California sued in federal court to block Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery deal. The states have alleged the proposed merger will illegally reduce competition in the markets for theatrical and blockbuster films, as well as basic cable TV. Paramount agreed to pause the WBD merger until after the case goes to trial, which is scheduled for March 2, 2027. Paramount has an economic motivation to settle sooner than that: As of Oct. 1, the company will start incurring a $7 million daily “ticking fee” payable to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders until the merger closes, amounting to about $1.3 billion by the time the trial is scheduled to conclude.

There have been growing calls for Bonta to engage in settlement talks with Paramount, including from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, the three biggest U.S. theater chains, and the DGA and IATSE unions. Reps for Paramount and Bonta were going to meet Monday but the California AG called it off, alleging Paramount leaked confidential details of their discussions; Paramount denied it leaked any private info.

A Paramount rep said Tuesday that “we remain hopeful and stand ready to continue good-faith discussions to resolve the Attorney Generals’ suit inclusive of structural remedies to move forward with our transaction.” Bonta has said any settlement would have to include “robust” structural remedies” in all three markets where the states have raised anticompetitive concerns — basic cable distribution, wide-release theatrical distribution and blockbuster film distribution, such as asset sales. Paramount has not revealed what “structural remedies” would be on the table in a settlement negotiation.

Iowa’s Bird penned an op-ed for The Daily Wire published Tuesday about her intention to turn to the Supreme Court to challenge the Democratic state AGs’ antitrust suit. “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,” Bird wrote. “California needs to understand that it doesn’t get to decide what Americans can choose to watch or stream.”

The lawsuit filed by Iowa and Montana names as defendants the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Iowa and Montana also filed a motion with the Supreme Court to expedite consideration of the motion for leave to file a bill of complaint. They requested setting defendant states’ deadline to respond for Sept. 15, 2026, and distributing the case for an Oct. 9 conference.

The antitrust lawsuit from the states — and a related suit filed by the WGA — are the only barriers remaining to the closing of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, which has received regulatory clearances from 68 jurisdictions.

“It is barely an exaggeration to say the [Paramount-Warner Bros.] merger was approved by every major country with a clearance regime (and many small countries) on every continent except Antarctica,” Iowa and Montana say in their filing. They note that the Trump administration’s Justice Department cleared Paramount-WBD in June, concluding that the merger will “increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem, with benefits for American consumers and workers.” The DOJ’s approval was reportedly greenlit by top officials over the objections of career antitrust lawyers at the department.

The Iowa and Montana AGs’ lawsuit alleges that the 12 states are politically motivated in trying to block the Paramount-WBD merger, asserting that the Democratic attorneys general believe that “Paramount (and particularly its CEO, David Ellison) cut a corrupt deal with President Trump to allow the merger.” The suit cites Bonta’s July 13 op-ed for Variety, in which he wrote that enforcement of antitrust law is “a check on billionaires currying favor with the president so he’ll do their bidding and hand-pick winners and losers, bypassing the law and the meritocracy that makes our economy thrive.”

Meanwhile, the Iowa and Montana filing claims that a “particularly revealing element of the public comments” from the AGs opposing Paramount-WBD has been regarding the news business and CNN. That’s notable “because the lawsuit itself does not allege harm in the news market.” For example, Bonta said in an interview with Democracy Now! that the merger will mean “less news” and “less journalists doing less investigative journalism, telling fewer stories, doing less truth telling and truth seeking. And so that has an impact on CNN and CBS, that argument.”

But as a legal matter, it’s irrelevant whether the state AGs suing the stop the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger are concerned about crony capitalism or David Ellison’s potential control of CNN.

The 12-state lawsuit alleges only that the deal would give the combined company illegal control over the three markets it has defined. The judge in the case, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, granted the states a temporary restraining order in July, writing that the AGs had demonstrated that “serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief.”

The Iowa-Montana suit argues that the Supreme Court must step in to allow the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal to go through because the harms of delaying it are irreversible.

“If the district court enjoins the merger and the parties abandon it — or if the delay itself makes the transaction impossible — no appellate ruling can revive the deal, the investments that were not made, or the years of competitive activity that were forgone. Review in the ordinary course will arrive only after the injury Plaintiff States allege has become permanent,” their motion says.

Gene Maddaus contributed to this story.