U.S. House votes to approve merger antitrust bill giving states more muscle By Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to approve a bill that would sharply raise fees for antitrust reviews of the biggest mergers and strengthen state attorneys general in antitrust fights.

The bipartisan bill combines a merger fee bill introduced by Representative Joe Neguse, a Democrat, and a measure to mandate that state attorneys general can pick the venue for antitrust lawsuits, which was introduced by Representative Ken Buck, a Republican.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 242-184.

Texas, along with other states, brought an antitrust action against Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc’s Google in 2020 that the search and advertising giant succeeded in moving from Texas to a New York court, angering conservatives.

The legislation would lower the fees paid for antitrust reviews of smaller deals to as little as $30,000. But bigger deals would be more expensive. Deals worth $5 billion or more would pay $2.25 million for their review.

A previous version of the filing fee bill had included budget increases for the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission, but those have been removed, according to a congressional aide.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill giving state attorneys general the right to pick the venue for antitrust fights but has not passed a measure to update merger filing fees.

In the Senate, the House bill has attracted public support from Republicans Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Tom Cotton as well as Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin. It is not immediately known when or if the Senate will vote on the bill.

Opposition to the bill included Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, who joined with at least four other California Democrats to urge that the bill be defeated because of the venue measure. California is home to some of the biggest tech companies, including Google and Meta Platforms’ Facebook (NASDAQ:).