After a long fight over the deal, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has cleared a major legal obstacle surrounding its $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks after a federal judge approved the company’s antitrust settlement with the US Department of Justice.
Judge P. Casey Pitts of the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted final judgment in the case, rejecting an effort by 12 states and the District of Columbia to stop the settlement.
The decision leaves intact an agreement that requires HPE to divest its Instant On wireless LAN campus and branch switching business and provide a license to Juniper’s AI Ops for Mist source code.
The ruling closes another chapter in a deal that has faced regulatory scrutiny since HPE announced the acquisition in January 2024. Regulators in the UK and European Union also reviewed the transaction, but the largest obstacle emerged in the US, where the Justice Department initially sued to stop it.
The DOJ’s original concern involved competition in the enterprise wireless LAN market. HPE and Juniper ranked behind Cisco as the second- and third-largest US providers of enterprise WLAN products. The department ultimately reached a settlement with HPE in June 2025 that allowed the transaction to move ahead, but with concessions.
HPE welcomed Judge Pitts’ decision, saying the settlement serves the public interest and that the combined company is already producing new technology for customers.
In contrast, California State Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement: “The court called US DOJ’s deal a ‘limited’ settlement approved under duress after the Trump Administration threatened to dismiss the lawsuit, leaving the public with no remedies at all—Americans deserve better.”
Challenges to the DOJ
The states challenged that agreement and raised questions about how the DOJ arrived at its decision. Their case focused partly on contacts involving HPE executives and senior federal officials.
Pitts found problems with disclosures surrounding those contacts. HPE chief legal officer John Schultz and consultant Arthur Schwartz had met with CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis and then-Defense Under Secretary Elbridge Colby. Schultz also testified about contacts involving HPE CEO Antonio Neri and the National Security Agency’s CIO, and also discussions between HPE representatives and people connected to the National Security Council.
HPE maintained that some contacts did not require disclosure because they did not concern the settlement itself. Pitts took a broader view of the disclosure requirements under the Tunney Act, which governs judicial review of federal antitrust settlements.
The court also examined the DOJ’s internal handling of the case, including disagreements between department leadership and career antitrust staff. But Pitts determined that concerns about the process did not provide sufficient grounds to reject the settlement under the legal standard he was required to apply.
The states did produce one important result: greater public visibility into how the settlement was negotiated. Pitts credited their intervention with revealing information that otherwise would not have become public.
States May Still Challenge
The ruling does not necessarily eliminate all legal risk. Pitts noted that approval of the DOJ settlement does not prevent states from bringing a separate case challenging the acquisition.
For HPE, the ruling removes an obstacle as it integrates Juniper. The company has already combined Juniper networking tech with its portfolio, including increased use of Mist AI across data center networking. HPE has also introduced Juniper Networking QFX switches that support AI inference and scale-up architectures, and launched an AI-based SASE platform.
