by Shaanth Nanguneri, Oregon Capital Chronicle
May 14, 2026
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and the state’s Department of Justice will ask state lawmakers to double the capacity of the agency’s antitrust team tasked with stopping illegal mergers and corporate monopolies.
Oregon’s Justice Department currently has eight antitrust officials for “resource-heavy cases,” but agency leaders say they need the Oregon Legislature to approve a budget to hire 16 instead in light of “the vacuum left by the federal government,” according to a department news release. Agency officials in the release highlighted the February ousting of the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, saying the federal department “has since seen a mass exodus of career lawyers and enforcement priorities have shifted sharply.”
Oregon has taken an increasingly central role in leading court cases to challenge corporate mergers in several industries under the Trump administration, particularly since states often pursue jury trials in antitrust cases, which is much rarer for the federal government.
Rayfield and 33 other state attorneys general in April won in an anti-trust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticket Master, rejecting a settlement U.S. Department of Justice officials reached just a week into the trial against the companies. The settlement — requiring the companies to pay damages but not officially separate — was seen by many as a confounding capitulation by the feds, and the states took the lead in arguments for the remainder of the seven-week trial. A federal jury ultimately found the companies engaged in anti-competitive behavior, and the states will push for the companies’ full separation in the damages part of their trial, expected to take place early next year.
Oregon also co-led a lawsuit which blocked the merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons in December 2024, and Rayfield is currently suing to stop the merger of broadcast companies Tegna and Nextstar to prevent the further consolidation of local TV news stations in Portland and across the country.
“There are families who are paying more for groceries, getting squeezed on their cable bill, or watching their local newscast get hollowed out, and they have no idea a corporate merger is the reason why,” Rayfield said in a statement this week. “That’s what’s happening around the country, and it’s why we’ve been fighting back. But the federal government is no longer a partner in this work, and the work doesn’t stop. States have been filling that gap, and we need the resources to keep doing it.”
The Oregon Department of Justice has asked that the Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board allocate funding for the positions when it meets in June. Jenny Hansson, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice, confirmed the agency made its $2.7 million request this week.
Antitrust cases are “complex, time-intensive, and require specialized expertise,” agency officials said in the news release. Oregon taxpayers are not on the hook for much of the costs in such cases, because attorneys fees are often recovered from the corporations fighting anti-trust regulation when states succeed, officials said.
At a Monday forum with four other Democratic state attorneys general, Rayfield said expanding Oregon’s antitrust team is a first step to taking on a greater role in antitrust enforcement as the federal government backs away from it.
“That first step forward is increasing the amount of resources that we have in our offices to fill the backlog or the backfill that is going on with the federal government,” he said.
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