On February 8, 2017, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division’s (the “DOJ”) request for an injunction blocking Anthem’s proposed $54 billion acquisition of Cigna. A few weeks earlier, the DOJ successfully blocked Aetna’s proposed $37 billion acquisition of Humana. According to then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, those transactions would “fundamentally reshape the health insurance industry” and would “leave much of the multitrillion dollar industry in the hands of three mammoth insurance companies.” Anthem has stated that it “[p]romptly intends to file a notice of appeal and request an expedited hearing of its appeal to reverse the Court's decision so that Anthem may move forward with the merger.”

According to the DOJ, Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna – the largest merger in the history of the health insurance industry – would substantially lessen competition in a number of markets, including: (1) national accounts; (2) large group employers in certain local commercial markets; (3) insurance exchanges; and (4) the purchase of healthcare services by commercial insurers, though the DOJ subsequently dropped its claim regarding individual exchanges. The DOJ’s complaint was joined by 11 states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, – and the District of Columbia (“State Plaintiffs”).