During the first Trump and Biden administrations, state attorneys general upped their emphasis on bringing antitrust cases, and that trend seems to be continuing into the early days of the second Trump administration. The ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting included a panel on April 2, 2025 titled “State Antitrust Enforcement on the Rise.” On that panel, state enforcers (and former enforcers) from Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee shared their priorities and expectations for interactions with federal enforcers under the Trump Administration. 

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Key Takeaways

• States’ Priorities. Antitrust has increasingly become a topic of conversation in people’s everyday lives (for example: when people could not buy Taylor Swift tickets). This has pushed states to allocate more resources toward antitrust enforcement, with a guiding principle of how their states’ citizens are being affected. Even states without antitrust statutes, such as Pennsylvania, have found creative ways to exercise the power they do have.
• Labor Issues on the Rise. While brought back into the antitrust mainstream under the Biden administration, labor has long been a core focus for offices of state attorneys general. Unlike federal enforcers, whose focus is on protecting competition generally, states have the added political obligation to think about what the job market looks like within their borders. This trend is expected to continue, according to enforcers on the panel, who expressed particular focus on no-poach agreements, noncompetes, and how mergers will affect labor markets.
• Increase in Criminal Enforcement. Not all states have actively sought criminal penalties for antitrust in recent years, but panelists noted the increase in state criminal enforcement that has coincided with an increase in federal criminal enforcement (although not all states have pursued criminal penalties in recent years).
• Cooperation Between States and the Federal Government. Although states often cooperate with federal agencies due to resource limitations, their actions do not rise and fall with federal participation. States work with other states to pursue cases in the absence of federal actions. That said, it is clear that federal-state cooperation is a crucial tool in the states’ toolkit. Panelists noted that federal field office closures may affect their ability to bring cases and would cause a loss in institutional and factual knowledge. 
• Conflict Between States and Agencies. However, there is a potential for conflict between federal and state priorities. One cited example was the DOJ’s recent launch of a task force to identify and eliminate unnecessary laws and regulations that are anticompetitive. (Since the panel concluded, the Trump Administration has extended this initiative with an Executive Order directing agency heads to identify anticompetitive regulations throughout the federal government.) Panelists expressed skepticism in terms of how this initiative would affect state action, particularly in regard to certificates of public advantage (COPAs) and other state-sanctioned monopolies. They noted that states must weigh the benefits of antitrust enforcement with ensuring their citizens have access to important services such as health care, and how protecting the public means more than just focusing on competition. 
• What a “Win” Looks Like. From a state’s perspective, some cases are so important from a consumer-protection standpoint that they must be brought even if the likelihood of success is low. The calculation is not “Can I win in court?” but “What does justice look like?” Justice for states may look like a change in the underlying circumstances rather than a win in court. And even where the states do ultimately lose, they may gain grounds to bring forward new legislation.