In the latest turn in Las Vegas’ long-running newspaper feud, a federal appeals panel has told a Nevada judge to undo an order that forced the Las Vegas Review-Journal to keep printing the Las Vegas Sun. The move hands the Review-Journal another win in the fight over the papers’ joint operating deal and temporarily pulls the safety net from the Sun’s print edition while the broader antitrust battle grinds on. The ruling does not finally decide who controls printing in the market, but it sharply limits what the district court can do for now.
The three-judge panel, Judges Daniel P. Collins, Lawrence VanDyke and Salvador Mendoza Jr., instructed U.S. District Judge Anne R. Traum to vacate her restraining order, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That directive builds on the panel’s earlier ruling that the 2005 joint-operating agreement is unlawful because it was never approved in writing by the U.S. attorney general, a requirement spelled out in the court’s published opinion. For readers who want to wade into the legal details, the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is available at Justia.
Judge Traum’s restraining order, issued March 13, had required the Review-Journal to continue printing and distributing the Sun while the district court considered the Sun’s antitrust claims and emergency requests for relief. The goal was to keep the Sun’s print pipeline alive while the litigation plays out, according to reporting on the district-court order. Bloomberg Law noted that Traum found the Sun had shown a likelihood of irreparable harm without temporary protection.
What the appeals court found
The Ninth Circuit panel reiterated that the Newspaper Preservation Act requires “prior written consent” from the attorney general for joint operating agreements entered after the statute took effect. It concluded that the 2005 amendment fit the Act’s definition of a covered JOA and therefore could not be lawfully enforced. Without that written approval, the court held, the 2005 pact is “unlawful and unenforceable,” a legal conclusion the Review-Journal’s lawyers have leaned on throughout their appeals.
The Sun’s lawyers have pushed back in filings, arguing that the older 1989 agreement should control or that reversion to that earlier deal is automatic, a debate that has played out in court papers and in local reporting. The appeals court’s order does not resolve that dispute, but it makes clear that the 2005 version cannot be the foundation for Judge Traum’s temporary printing order.
Legal implications
With the 2005 agreement off the table for now, the central question is whether the Sun can keep using the Review-Journal’s presses under some other legal theory, or whether it will have to find another way to print or shift to an online-only presence. The fight puts some classic Newspaper Preservation Act and antitrust issues on center stage: what happens to a post-Act JOA that never received the required attorney general signoff, and what remedy, whether injunctive relief, damages or a return to an earlier contract, best protects competition and local news diversity.
Courthouse News Service and other outlets have tracked how those remedial options have shaped the parties’ filings and motions, as both sides try to position themselves for whatever version of the deal survives.
What’s next
The Sun asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case late last year, but the justices declined in February to take it up, leaving the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and the district-court docket to sort out the fallout. Bloomberg Law reported the high court’s decision.
Now that the appeals panel has instructed Judge Traum to vacate her restraining order, the district court will have to decide whether to craft some new form of interim relief or let the Review-Journal stop printing the Sun while the case continues. That practical choice, more than any legal flourish, could determine whether Las Vegas keeps two daily papers on newsstands in the months ahead.
