Watch: Can Trump Continue to Invoke IEEPA to Justify Tariffs?

Andrew Morris, senior litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), details the organization’s opposition to President Trump’s reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as justification for imposing tariffs.

The NCLA filed, on behalf of several small businesses, what it says was the first lawsuit against President Trump for citing IEEPA as the basis of his tariff actions. The U.S. Court of International Trade recently vacated the tariffs, saying that the law doesn’t give a president the freedom to impose them. The ruling, along with a preliminary injunction against the tariffs by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, were subsequently stayed by a U.S. court of appeals, and the tariffs remain in effect, at least for now.

The NCLA is a non-partisan group litigating matters involving individual liberties, “primarily in connection with the administrative state,” Morris says. The tariff issue is the organization’s first venture into matters relating to international trade. It believes that IEEPA does not authorize the President to order tariffs of any kind. While applauding the Court of International Trade’s ruling, Morris says, NCLA doesn’t believe it went far enough. IEEPA, he adds, can only be invoked to impose economic sanctions and embargoes and freeze assets — “but not to order tariffs, which are really taxes that Americans have to pay. We believe that should be completely off the table.” That position was taken by the D.C. District Court.

The appellate court stay means that “everything’s held in place while it’s fought out in the court of appeals,” Morris says. Ultimately, however, a final ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court “seems pretty likely.” The case is important for a number of reasons, he says, potentially affecting trillions of dollars’ worth of international commerce. Moreover, it tackles the larger question of emergency statutes, “which are long-running problems for the legal system,” going all the way back to the New Deal.