Newsmax, DirecTV Join Challenge to FCC’s Nexstar-Tegna Decision

The new appeal adds to mounting legal pressure on the transaction, which was approved by the FCC on Thursday (March 19) and then closed by Nexstar roughly 15 minutes later, per Reuters. The deal combines the broadcasters into a company with 259 television stations reaching about 80% of U.S. households, according to Deadline.

The challengers include trade groups from Pennsylvania, Washington, Indiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, along with Newsmax.

DirecTV, which has already brought a separate antitrust case over the merger, is also seeking to participate in the latest lawsuit, according to Deadline.

At the center of the case is the FCC’s decision to grant Nexstar a waiver from the national television ownership cap, which generally bars a single company from owning stations that together reach more than 39% of the country. The plaintiffs argue that only Congress has the authority to raise that threshold and that the FCC broke with its own prior practice by allowing the transaction to proceed without requiring station sales to bring the company into compliance, according to Deadline.

The appeal also targets the agency’s handling of local ownership restrictions, including rules that typically prevent one company from controlling more than two stations in the same market, per Deadline. The challengers say the FCC’s actions marked a significant break from precedent in a case involving one of the largest broadcast mergers in recent years.

The filing places particular emphasis on how the decision was made. According to Deadline, the merger was approved by the FCC’s Media Bureau rather than through a vote of the full commission. The challengers argued that the process was “anything but ordinary” and set a major precedent that required a hearing and a commission-wide vote on a transaction of this scale.

Related: Nexstar and Tegna’s Local TV Megamerger Challenged by Eight States

The appeal also points to Trump’s public endorsement of the merger on Truth Social in February and to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s supportive response on X while the deal was still under agency review, according to Deadline. In the court filing, the plaintiffs wrote: “Binding precedent from both this Court and the FCC requires the Commission to hold a hearing and put this major transaction to an up-or-down vote, to ensure a rogue Bureau is not running roughshod over statutory limits. But those precedents went out the window after the President’s social media missive, which Chairman Carr promptly echoed by directing the Media Bureau to ‘get [the deal] done.’ Taking those marching orders to heart, the Bureau dashed out an order approving the transaction in less than four months—well shy of the 180-day timeline to which the Commission generally aspires, and nowhere near the 200-400 days that prior broadcast mergers have required.”

The group is seeking an emergency stay to halt the merger while the appeal moves forward, per Reuters.

The court challenge comes alongside a separate effort by a group of state attorneys general to stop the transaction on antitrust grounds. Less than a day before the FCC approved the merger, attorneys general, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, sued to block the deal, according to Deadline. After Nexstar said the acquisition had closed, those officials asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order.

An FCC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
Backing the appeal in a friend-of-the-court brief is the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Regulatory Freedom, part of the CPAC Foundation. The group argued that “Waiving the ownership rules will only encourage further media consolidation and cultural polarization and limit the public’s access to independent local voices,”

Source: Deadline