The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will hear two consolidated legal cases challenging President Donald Trump‘s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in November.
The high court issued a brief order granting the motion for the cases to be expedited, after the Justice Department requested the justices rule on the petition to take up the case at a quicker pace. The unsigned order said the Supreme Court will set arguments in the case for the first week of November.
The Supreme Court decided to take up the case weeks after the full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 7-4 that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy tariffs was unlawful. The Justice Department quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted the petition to hear the case.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer requested the justices take up the case in his petition to the high court last week, noting the appeals court’s decision “casts a pall of uncertainty upon ongoing foreign negotiations that the President has been pursuing through tariffs over the past five months, jeopardizing both already-negotiated framework deals and ongoing negotiations.”
“Few cases have so clearly called out for this Court’s swift resolution,” the petition said, requesting the Supreme Court take up the case on an expedited schedule.
Sauer presented two questions for the high court to consider in the petition. The first question asks whether IEEPA “authorizes the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump pursuant to the national emergencies declared or continued” via his executive orders, while the second question asks “if IEEPA authorizes the tariffs, whether the statute unconstitutionally delegates legislative authority to the President.”
The tariffs at the center of this lawsuit include those levied against Canada, Mexico, and China regarding the flow of fentanyl from those countries into the United States, alongside the “Liberation Day” tariffs Trump unveiled in April. The “Liberation Day” tariffs include most countries’ baseline 10% tariff and the higher so-called “reciprocal” rates for select other countries. The president’s tariffs on aluminum, steel, and cars, which were enacted citing a different statute, are not in dispute.
The case that the Trump administration appealed following the loss at the Federal Circuit, Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, was consolidated with a similar case, Learning Resources v. Trump, which was set to have oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit later this month. The justices granted a petition to hear the Learning Resources before it had worked through the lower courts, with its Tuesday order consolidating the pair of cases for arguments in November.
TRUMP ASKS SUPREME COURT FOR EXPEDITED RULING ON HIS TARIFF POWER
The case is slated to be among the most high-profile legal disputes set for the start of the Supreme Court’s upcoming term, which begins in October. The high court’s ruling will determine a signature part of Trump’s trade and broader economic agenda.
