A decade-long antitrust dispute returned to the spotlight in 2025, when Jeld-Wen Inc. filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, seeking to overturn a ruling that ordered the company to divest its door skins manufacturing plant in Towanda, Pennsylvania. The divestiture order traces back to a 2016 lawsuit filed by fellow doormaker Steves and Sons Inc., in which a federal court found that Jeld-Wen violated antitrust laws, reducing competition in the market for molded door skins. The matter appeared to be over when Woodgrain Inc. purchased and moved into the Towanda facility in late 2024. Then came Jeld-Wen’s Notice of Appeal. Now, the long-running dispute has entered a critical new phase, with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stepping in to have its say. At the same time, a separate battle in the tech world may provide legal ammunition for Steves and Sons.
Through its appeal, Jeld-Wen argues that the court doesn’t have the authority to force such a massive structural change as the sale of the Towanda plant. The company also claims that, now that Steves owns a door skins plant in Athens, Georgia, the divestiture of the Towanda plant is “inequitable,” suggesting that it does more harm than good to the market.
According to Jeld-Wen’s appeal, the original court order for divestiture aimed to prevent Steves from going out of business, while restoring competition. “Seven years later, both rationales have evaporated,” the company argues. “There is no evidence that Steves faces any other risk of imminent irreparable harm.” Three competitors now exist in the door skins market, the appeal says, which company officials say undercuts the argument that divestiture is necessary for restoring competition.
The DOJ is requesting time at an oral argument set to take place January 29, 2026, arguing that forced sales are a vital tool for the government to use in protecting consumers. At the same time, DOJ officials say Jeld-Wen has failed to meet the “high bar” required to undo this type of divestiture. The government is requesting three minutes to argue its interests in applying federal antitrust laws to protect competition.
Meanwhile, on January 13, 2026, lawyers for Steves and Sons alerted the court to a new ruling in Epic Games versus Apple. In the Epic case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found Apple in “civil contempt,” after the company was ordered to allow app developers to show users cheaper ways to pay outside of its app store. According to court documents, Apple then allegedly allowed developers to use warning messages designed to frighten app users and “invisible” buttons that matched an app’s background. Apple also attempted to charge a 27% commission on outside sales, which the court deemed “prohibitively high.”
The link between Steves’ case and the court’s opinion on Apple pertains to equitable remedies—the power a judge has to order a company to take specific actions in order to fix a market. Jeld-Wen has used a Supreme Court case, Trump versus CASA Inc., to argue that judges cannot issue broad orders that might help companies not involved in the original lawsuit. The Epic Games ruling upended that argument, after the court clarified that federal antitrust laws give judges “large discretion” to craft fixes that restore competition, even if those fixes provide incidental benefits to other businesses in the same market.
As Steves and Jeld-Wen prepare for the argument on January 29, the Fourth Circuit must evaluate DOJ’s call for tough enforcement of the divestiture. Ten years later, the dispute still hovers over a door skins plant in Towanda, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, a dispute over door skins could serve as a guiding case in how courts act to restore competition.