U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday invalidating President Donald Trump’s tariffs will have enormous legal and practical significance. In a 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, with seven different opinions filling 170 pages, the court held that the tariffs Trump imposed are illegal.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in full by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, and in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson each wrote separate concurring or concurring in the judgment opinions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a 63-page dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Thomas also wrote a separate dissent.
What are the most important takeaways from the decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump?
1. The court, at times, will say no to President Trump.
I believe that the greatest significance of the tariffs decision is that it shows a court willing to say no to President Trump on a significant issue. In the first year of the Trump presidency, 25 challenges to presidential actions came to the court, almost all on its emergency docket. In 22, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the president. But the 6-3 decision striking down tariffs shows that the court will not simply be a rubber stamp approving the president’s actions.
2. The president does not have the inherent power to impose tariffs.
All nine of the justices agreed that the president has no inherent constitutional authority to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts began his majority opinion by emphasizing a basic constitutional principle: Congress, not the president, has the power to impose taxes, and tariffs are taxes. Roberts, quoting long-standing precedents, said that the “power to impose tariffs is ‘very clear[ly] … a branch of the taxing power.’” As he stated, “‘A tariff,’ after all, ‘is a tax levied on imported goods and services.’”
Nor did any of the dissenting justices argue that the president has inherent power under Article II of the Constitution to impose tariffs. This is significant because it means that cases involving tariffs—and there are sure to be more, since Trump reacted to the ruling by imposing new tariffs—always are about a statutory question: Does the federal law empower the president to impose tariffs?
3. The court’s majority holds that a statute must be explicit in giving the president the power to impose tariffs.
The central issue in the case was whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorized Trump to impose tariffs. The IEEPA does not mention tariffs. It authorizes the president to “regulate … importation” in order to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat.”
Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett and Jackson, emphatically said that the law does not provide the president the power to impose tariffs. Roberts wrote: “IEEPA’s grant of authority to ‘regulate … importation’ falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The government points to no statute in which Congress used the word ‘regulate’ to authorize taxation. And until now, no president has read IEEPA to confer such power.” The court concluded: “We hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.”
Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent sharply disagreed with this and interpreted the statute as allowing Trump’s tariffs. Kavanaugh argued: “Statutory text, history and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.” He said that he found the majority’s statutory analysis “exceedingly weak.”
The important takeaway is that a majority of the court says that a statute must be clear in giving the president the power to impose tariffs. Absent such explicit authority, the tariffs will be deemed illegal.
4. There is substantial disagreement among the justices over the major questions doctrine.
Six justices agreed that the IEEPA does not provide authority for Trump’s tariffs and they are thus invalid. The discussion of the major questions doctrine was thus unnecessary to the court’s holding. Nonetheless, a substantial part of the 170 pages of opinions were focused on the major questions doctrine.
The major questions doctrine is the principle that executive agencies cannot act on major questions of economic or political significance without clear direction from Congress. For example, in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the Supreme Court invalidated President Joe Biden’s student loan relief program based on the major questions doctrine.
In the tariffs case, Chief Justice Roberts, in a part of the opinion joined by Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, said the tariffs were invalid because they concerned a major question of economic and political significance without sufficiently clear authority from Congress. But there was significant disagreement among the justices about the major questions doctrine. Justice Kagan, in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, argued, as she did in prior cases, that there is no legal basis for the major questions doctrine. She said that was no need to even address this in order to invalidate President Trump’s tariffs.
Chief Justice Roberts, and also Justice Gorsuch in his concurring opinion, were explicit that the major questions doctrine applies even though tariffs involve foreign affairs. By contrast, Justice Kavanaugh in his dissent sharply disagreed and declared that “the major questions doctrine does not apply in the foreign affairs context. In the foreign affairs realm, courts recognize that Congress often deliberately grants flexibility and discretion to the president to pursue America’s interests.”
There also was disagreement among some of the justices as to the basis for the major questions doctrine. Justice Gorsuch wrote a 46-page concurring opinion focused almost entirely on the major questions doctrine. He argued that it is based on long-standing principles in many areas of law and that it is derived from the Constitution. Justice Gorsuch devotes significant attention to criticizing the liberal justices for not accepting the major questions doctrine and recognizing basis for invalidating the tariffs. But he also sharply disagrees with Justice Barrett’s finding that the major questions doctrine in commonsense and textual interpretation.
Justice Barrett replied and said that she was writing only “to address Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence regarding the major questions doctrine.” She states: “To the extent that Justice Gorsuch attacks the view that ‘common sense’ alone can explain all of our major questions decisions, he attacks a straw man. I never have espoused that view. Rather, as I explained in my concurrence in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the major questions doctrine ‘situates text in context’ and is therefore best understood as an ordinary application of textualism.” In other words, Justice Barrett, unlike Justice Gorsuch, does not see the major questions doctrine as a constitutional principle. But Justice Barrett minimizes the significance of her disagreement with Justice Gorsuch and says, “Our only disagreement may be over the level of clarity required before a particular interpretation can be deemed the most natural one.”
Basically, the court split 3-3-3 in its discussion of the major questions doctrine, leaving as many questions about it as providing answers.
5. The remedy is uncertain.
The court’s holding was that hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs were illegally collected by the federal government. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, raised this issue and said “the interim effects of the court’s decision could be substantial. The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who have paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.” He quoted Justice Barrett’s statement at oral argument that this is likely to be a “mess.”
But notably, none of the other opinions addressed this, separating the question of whether the tariffs are legal from the issue of the remedy for their illegality. This is certain to be the focus of enormous litigation and well could return to the Supreme Court.
6. President Trump’s reaction and the future.
After the decision, President Trump attacked the justices, especially the conservative ones. He said, “They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats.” Trump called the three conservatives “disloyal, unpatriotic,” and at one point he launched into a rant about how the court should have invalidated the election results in 2020, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Presidents have lost major cases in the Supreme Court before and have been frustrated with rulings. But I do not recall anything like this attack. What, if any impact, might it have on the justices as they consider myriad other challenges to Trump’s actions?
Trump reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision by imposing a 10% global tariff that he wants to increase to 15%. There is no doubt that this will be challenged in the courts and the decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump will be crucial as courts determine the legality of these tariffs.
Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law. He’s also the author of many books, including his most recent ones: Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times and The Supreme Court October Term 2024: Taking Sides.
