A bipartisan group of 207 members of Congress has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule that President Donald Trump exceeded his constitutional authority by imposing tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The 31-page brief, filed October 24, 2025, in the consolidated cases Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., argues that the President unlawfully usurped Congress’s constitutional power to regulate commerce and levy tariffs. The cases are scheduled for oral arguments November 5, 2025.
Trump imposed the tariffs in April 2025 through five executive orders, invoking IEEPA to declare national emergencies related to trade deficits and drug trafficking. The tariffs included:
- A baseline 10% duty on imported goods from nearly all countries (“reciprocal tariffs”)
- Additional country-specific tariffs, with China facing potential duties reaching 145%
- Tariffs on Canada and Mexico related to drug trafficking at the southern border.
The congressional members assert that the Constitution grants Congress—not the President—exclusive authority to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” under Article I, Section 8. The brief emphasizes this reflects the Framers’ intent for the most democratically accountable branch to control taxation and tariffs.
“When the President wishes to impose tariffs, he must comply with the existing, lawful delegations of tariff power that Congress has enacted or, if he finds those authorities insufficient, ask Congress for new authority,” the attorneys representing the congressional members wrote. “Here, however, the President has usurped Congress’s constitutional authority by impermissibly using IEEPA to impose tariffs.”
The brief includes 36 senators and 171 representatives, with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski as the sole GOP senator joining the predominantly Democratic coalition. The group includes members from committees with jurisdiction over tariffs and trade.
The brief emphasizes that neither the word “duties” nor “tariffs” appears anywhere in IEEPA, which was enacted in 1977 to provide the President with powers to impose sanctions, export controls, and freeze assets during national emergencies. Instead, IEEPA allows the President to “regulate … importation or exportation” of property during declared emergencies.
The congressional members argue this language does not constitute authorization to impose tariffs. “IEEPA’s delegated power to ‘regulate’ is not a power to impose tariffs,” the brief states.
When Congress delegates tariff authority, it does so explicitly using terms like “duties,” “tariffs,” and “articles,” the brief argues. The amici point to several statutes that demonstrate this pattern:
- Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 explicitly refers to “new or additional duties”
- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act references “duties” when discussing presidential adjustments
- Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 empowers the President to proclaim “a temporary import surcharge … in the form of duties”
- Section 201 authorizes proclamation of “an increase in, or the imposition of, any duty on the imported article”
All these tariff statutes were enacted as part of trade or tariff acts and codified in Title 19 of the U.S. Code, which addresses “Customs Duties.” By contrast, IEEPA is part of Title 50, denominated “War and National Defense,” and is not a tariff or trade act.
Congressional tariff delegations historically include specific procedures, substantive standards, and temporal limits that IEEPA lacks. These include:
- Trade-specific prerequisites before the President can act
- Public hearings and input from interested parties
- Formal investigations by independent agencies
- Time limitations on how long tariffs can remain in place
- Caps on tariff increases
Section 122, for example, limits tariffs to 150 days and 15% ad valorem. Section 201 investigations require extensive processes by the U.S. International Trade Commission, including detailed questionnaires, public hearings, formal votes, and written reports.
“IEEPA contains none of the hallmarks of legislation delegating tariff power to the executive,” the brief argues. IEEPA requires only a declaration of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, foreign policy, or the economy originating from abroad, with no trade-specific criteria.
The brief notes that in the five decades since IEEPA’s enactment, no President from either party until now has ever invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs. Between 1977 and 2024, Presidents used IEEPA 69 times to respond to emergencies ranging from the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis to foreign cyber threats—but never for tariffs.
The brief argues that reading IEEPA’s power to “regulate” imports as including tariff authority would create constitutional problems. Since IEEPA grants power to regulate both imports and exports, interpreting “regulate” to mean “tariff” would suggest the statute authorizes export tariffs—which the Constitution explicitly forbids in Article I, Section 9, Clause 5.
Additionally, Congress routinely grants regulatory power with no intention of conferring tariff authority, the brief notes, pointing to the SEC’s power to regulate securities and the FCC’s power to regulate communications.
Reading IEEPA to include tariff authority would “effectively nullify the guardrails set forth in every statute in which Congress expressly granted the President limited tariff authority,” the brief argues.
For example, Congress passed Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to address balance-of-payment emergencies, but limited such tariffs to 15% and 150 days. If IEEPA authorized unlimited tariffs for the same purpose, Section 122 would be rendered meaningless.
The Supreme Court consolidated two challenges to Trump’s tariffs after multiple lower courts ruled against the administration.
Learning Resources Inc. and hand2mind Inc., Illinois-based educational toy companies, challenged the tariffs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The companies import about 60% of their products and claim the tariffs will cost them $100 million in 2025.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled the tariffs exceeded Trump’s authority under IEEPA and issued an injunction.
Five small businesses—including a wine importer, plumbing supply company, women’s cycling wear brand, and specialty sportfishing gear company—along with 12 states led by Oregon challenged the tariffs in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
A three-judge panel granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on May 28, 2025, permanently enjoining the government from enforcing the tariffs. The panel ruled that while the President may have limited emergency powers to set tariffs under certain statutes, IEEPA does not grant “unlimited tariff authority.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld that decision 7-4 in an en banc ruling on August 29, 2025. The majority opinion concluded that “IEEPA’s grant of presidential authority to ‘regulate’ imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders.”
The appeals court noted that “it seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs. The statute neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the President’s power to impose tariffs.”
The congressional amici warn that the President’s interpretation threatens to undermine the tariff and trade law architecture Congress has constructed over centuries.
“Since the Nation’s founding, Congress has exercised its constitutional responsibility over trade,” the brief states, noting that the very first Congress enacted the Tariff Act of 1789 within its first months. In recent decades, Congress has approved 16 trade agreements with trading partners and enacted numerous tariff preference programs.
The brief emphasizes that the President’s actions “do not merely modify the statutory tariffs Congress has promulgated and approved—they have ‘abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely.'”
