The DIRECTV legal team may be getting a little extra in their holiday bonus checks from the company this year. They certainly seem to deserve it, after the company announced on Tuesday that its lawsuit against Nexstar Media Group, Mission Broadcasting, and White Knight Broadcasting for conspiring to fix prices had been reinstated in federal court.

As announced by DIRECTV, its lawsuit against Nexstar, Mission, and White Knight will now resume in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. That comes after a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the cable channel distributor does indeed have standing to sue under U.S. antitrust laws.

“We are pleased that the 2nd Circuit has held that DIRECTV has standing in this case, and we plan to proceed with our claim that Nexstar, White Knight, and Mission have abused their ’sidecar’ relationship in violation of FCC regulations and longstanding competition laws,” DIRECTV chief legal officer Michael Hartman said. “Nexstar’s sidecars have made a mockery of existing broadcast ownership rules, resulting in ever-increasing retransmission consent fees at consumers’ expense.”

DIRECTV first filed the lawsuit in 2023, saying that Nexstar had conspired with Mission and White Knight to fix prices and manipulate retransmission consent fees. But a year later, Judge Kevin Castel dismissed the case, saying that because DIRECTV had refused to pay the prices it saw as unlawful, it had no standing to sue under antitrust laws.

The Department of Justice joined DIRECTV in urging the Second Circuit to reconsider the decision, and their efforts were clearly successful. It’s a small comfort to the viewers of more than two dozen local affiliates of ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox, and NBC that are not currently available on DIRECTV as a result of the dispute, but they may well be inching toward a resolution of those blackouts.

This is just the latest legal victory for DIRECTV over Nexstar. In February, the company won more than $26 million in a case centered on a dispute over retransmission fees from an NBC affiliate owned by Nexstar. The court determined that Nexstar had improperly overcharged for the rights to rebroadcast the station and awarded damages accordingly.

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