Last week, ten state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint in a federal district court in New York. While it might not seem unusual for state officials tasked with enforcing antitrust and consumer protection laws to seek to halt the 4-to-3 horizontal merger of two of the nation’s mobile wireless companies, that the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice did not join the lawsuit was extraordinary.

But the norms that govern oversight of the communications industries have been crashing down a lot recently. Last month, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, quickly followed by two of his Republican colleagues, announced that he was supporting the merger subject to a handful of behavioral conditions, almost identical in nature to those strongly opposed by Pai in previous years. What made this announcement even more suspicious was the fact that there was no concurrent announcement by the Justice Department that it, too, was approving the transaction.

For the FCC to “go it alone” was unprecedented. When the FCC and the Antitrust Division are both charged with reviewing mergers in the media and telecommunications industries, the two agencies will announce a decision to grant a merger almost simultaneously. In the nearly four weeks since Pai gave his blessing to the transaction, the Antitrust Division and the Assistant Attorney General who leads it, Makan Delrahim, have made no official announcement. There have only been news reports that Delrahim is not satisfied with the Pai’s decision and instead is trying to create a new, viable, fourth national mobile wireless carrier by requiring the merging parties to divest spectrum and other assets, a task that few believe is possible.

More at Benton.