Iowa and Montana have had enough. After a coalition of left-leaning attorneys general from states such as California and New York announced a legal crusade against the iconic American company Warner Bros., the two states filed a motion with the Supreme Court asking it to throw out the suit.
Whatever their chances of success, you can see why they are frustrated. Warner’s future has been uncertain for months. The company abandoned a proposed deal with Netflix after left-leaning policymakers raised concerns about market competition. So Warner instead pursued a merger with Paramount Skydance that would create a stronger American competitor to the dominant Netflix.
Except politicians butted in. Again.
The Warner Bros. saga reveals a serious problem with our economic landscape: lawsuits — often from governments — have become just another cost of doing business. Too many companies that seek to expand, or even just acquire the capital needed to survive, are promptly slapped with legal action by political activists.
Think of it as a lawsuit tax that the entire economy must pay. Is it any wonder that even some small businesses have legal divisions these days?
Basic rules against fraud and abuse are necessary, but for some, suing has become the primary means to enact an anti-business agenda.
Another example came last year when Nexstar Media Group, which owns TV stations, announced it was merging with its competitor Tegna. California Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately popped out of a hole in the ground and sued the two companies, claiming their deal would lessen competition.
What Bonta left out is that Nexstar does have competition. Its channels compete with an endless deluge of online content, which is why the company has concluded it needs more scale to survive in the digital age.
In other words, Nexstar is seeking to make the media market more competitive rather than less. Yet apparently all that Democratic attorneys see are two companies that must be taken down a peg.
The real winner of ideologically driven litigation isn’t the consumer but Big Law. It’s no surprise to find that demand for lawyers rose 3% just in the second quarter of 2026 while billing rates soared by 7%.
It’s no surprise either that Big Law attorneys tend to lean left, with 92% of their political donations going to Democrats during the 2024 election cycle. Lawyers pony up the funds while pet politicians provide them with the business.
And the rest of us pay up. The average lawsuit costs a business tens of thousands of dollars or the equivalent of a one-year salary for a mid-level employee.
During the Biden administration, lawfare all but became official government policy. The government threw its weight around so much that a shocking 40% of the S&P 500 market cap was under investigation by the Department of Justice.
With the antitrust ideologues thrown out in 2024 and no longer operating the levers of power at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, it’s fallen on left-wing attorneys general like Bonta to keep wasting businesses’ time — along with roving bands of Biden exiles like the market interventionist American Economic Liberties Project.
Earlier this year, the American tech companies Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks cleared the last hurdle to merge. The resulting globally scaled business received a boost when the intelligence agencies highlighted the benefits of American competition against Chinese conglomerate Huawei.
Before that, HPE-Juniper had been briefly held up by the DOJ. Internal disagreement inside the Trump administration almost sabotaged the deal. Democrats in Congress called for investigations. Left-wing AGs intervened during a routine judicial review to try to derail it.
Now, Bonta is once again making noise. Despite HPE-Juniper’s obvious benefits for our economy and national security, interventionists just can’t let it go.
Businesses don’t need a crowd of lawyers following them around, threatening them in the misguided name of competition. They need the kind of predictable political climate and level playing field that comes when you’re not constantly being threatened with litigation.
It’s time to scrap the lawsuit tax and let our economy thrive.