On April 17, just hours before a temporary retraining order preventing Nexstar Media Group from fully integrating the assets it acquired with regulatory approval from TEGNA, Sacramento-based Chief U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley issued a Preliminary Injunction preventing the company founded three decades ago by Perry Sook from proceeding from a “hold separate” order — essentially keeping TEGNA as-is prior to the rule-busting merger of the two companies.
How that impacted Free Press et al v. FCC being heard in the D.C. federal appeals court was the next question. We now have an answer.
In a brief two page order issued late Tuesday, a panel of three circuit judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a request for an emergency stay of the FCC’s approval of the Nexstar/TEGNA transaction.
The lawsuit, filed by the Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania with intervenor DirectTV, was filed nearly concurrently to that filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by DirecTV and eight state Attorneys General against Nexstar and TEGNA.
Thanks to Judge Nunley’s ruling, D.C. Circuit Judges Wilkins, Katsas and Rao determined that appellants’ showing of irreparable harm “appears to be diminished” by the
preliminary injunction. As such, the D.C. court was unable to grant the stay.
There’s more: the appellants “have not shown this court is likely to have jurisdiction under 47 U.S.C. § 402(b) to review the March 19, 2026 order of the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau” as the D.C. court noted that the approval of the Nexstar/TEGNA merger by Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone on delegated authority is subject to a pending Application for Review at the FCC, requiring a further look by the agency.
On that note, the D.C. court on its own motion ordered the Commission and Nexstar to each file a response to the emergency petitions for a writ of mandamus — not to exceed 5,200 words — by May 11. In its response, the Commission “should state when it expects to satisfy its nondiscretionary obligation to “pass[] upon” the pending application for review of the Media Bureau Order.
DirecTV and the Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania may each file a reply, not to exceed 2,600 words, by May 18.
The key remaining question for the D.C. circuit judges? “What impact, if any, does this preliminary injunction have on appellants’ ability to demonstrate irreparable harm?”
