Oregon Joins Lawsuit Challenging 14 Billion HP Juniper Merger as 2,500 Jobs Hang in the Balance

A Coalition of states, including Oregon, filed a lawsuit yesterday opposing the $14 billion merger settlement between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, which is linked to the loss of 2,500 jobs.

Lawsuit Opposing HP-Juniper Merger Filed In California

After Hewlett Packard Enterprises and Juniper Networks, the second- and third-largest providers of wireless networking equipment in the United States, reached a merger settlement. The merger would harm competition, raise prices, and reduce innovation in the market.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said, “Wireless touches everything… When two of the biggest players in wireless networking merge, prices go up, and innovation slows down.”

Publicly redacted court filings show that the merger settlement violates the public interest because of the corrupt process at the U.S. Department of Justice.

In response, the states filed a court brief opposing the $14 billion merger settlement in the San Jose Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, after the court overseeing the case permitted them to intervene in the merger review.

The lawsuit argues that the Justice Department’s antitrust division initially had a strong case opposing the HPE/Juniper merger.

The two companies engaged in significant head-to-head competition, and combining them would result in a highly concentrated market, with HPE and Cisco controlling a vast majority of the wireless networking equipment market. The merger was presumptively anticompetitive.

HPE refused to accept terms that would have addressed the anticompetitive concerns and hired a group of well-connected lobbyists to go over the heads of the antitrust division, striking a sweetheart deal that failed to address the merger’s harms at all.

Threats were made against the head of the antitrust division, Gail Slater, and her top deputies, who were sidelined from the decisive round of negotiations and eventually ousted from the Justice Department. Both the government and HPE withheld information from their statutorily required disclosures about the alternative remedies.

The state coalition urges the court to reject the settlement under the federal Tunney Act, a post-Watergate law enacted by Congress in 1974, and asks the court to do so because the process was corrupted. The hearing is scheduled for March 23 at 10 a.m. PT.

Job Losses After Hewlett-Packard Juniper Merger

Combined, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper had about 72,271 employees before the merger, and HPE had already announced a 2,500-job reduction program on March 6- before the deal closed- putting workforce cuts squarely in the background of the merger fight.

The HPE said the losses are part of “a cost reduction program intended to reduce structural operating costs” and is expected to be implemented through fiscal year 2026. HPE said the move was motivated by gross savings of approximately $350 million by fiscal year 2027.

The savings will come at the expense of the 5% of its global workforce, equivalent to over 2,500 jobs, that will be laid off. HP had 63,773 employees, excluding employees on leave of absence who are not expected to return to work. As of April 1, 2025, Juniper’s workforce comprised 9 non-employee directors and approximately 11,167 employees.