The Supreme Court ruled today — February 20, 2026 — that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the President the power to impose tariffs. The vote was 6-3. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority. The Court’s most sweeping executive trade action in modern history has been struck down as unconstitutional overreach.

The case is Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, consolidated with V.O.S. Selections v. United States. The ruling vacates the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs — the sweeping duties imposed in April 2025 on imports from dozens of countries — and remands the question of refunds to the U.S. Court of International Trade. More than $160 billion in IEEPA tariff revenue has been collected since January 2025. The fight over who gets it back, and how, is now just beginning.

What the Court Held

The core holding is straightforward: IEEPA’s grant of authority to the President to “regulate… importation” during a declared national emergency does not include the power to levy tariffs. Roberts’ majority reasoned that “regulate” and “tax” are distinct powers — Congress addresses them separately and expressly throughout the U.S. Code — and that tariffs, unlike the sanctions and asset freezes IEEPA was designed to authorize, “operate directly on domestic importers to raise revenue for the Treasury.” The statute’s text “absent… any mention of tariffs or duties” could not bear the weight the administration placed on it.

The majority applied the major questions doctrine — the Court’s tool, sharpened in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), for requiring clear congressional authorization before agencies act on questions of “vast economic and political significance.” Tariffs affecting trillions of dollars in trade and reshaping entire industries plainly qualify. The administration could not point to unambiguous statutory text authorizing the claimed power. That was fatal.

Justices Gorsuch and Barrett filed separate concurrences. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson concurred in the judgment, with Kagan writing separately. Justice Thomas dissented. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Thomas and Alito, also dissented, arguing that IEEPA’s broad language supported presidential tariff authority.

Section 232 tariffs (national security authority) and Section 301 tariffs (retaliation for unfair trade practices) were not before the Court and remain in effect. Those statutes rest on different legal foundations — but today’s ruling narrows dramatically what the executive can claim by emergency declaration alone.

How We Got Here

The legal architecture Trump built his tariff program on was always contested. IEEPA — enacted in 1977 — was never used to impose general import duties in the nearly five decades since its passage. The administration argued the statute’s sweeping language encompassed tariff authority; critics countered that the trade deficit is a chronic condition, not a cognizable “emergency,” and that IEEPA was designed for sanctions and asset freezes, not revenue-raising trade barriers.

The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down the Liberation Day tariffs on May 28, 2025, finding that IEEPA’s triggering conditions — “an unusual and extraordinary threat” — were not met by a structural trade deficit that has persisted for decades. The Federal Circuit affirmed on August 29, 2025. The administration sought Supreme Court review, and the Court agreed to hear the case on an expedited basis.

Beneath the IEEPA question lay a deeper constitutional one: did Congress permissibly delegate its Article I tariff power in the first place? The Constitution is explicit — Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the authority to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to regulate foreign commerce. Under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress cannot transfer its legislative power to the executive without an “intelligible principle” guiding that exercise. The Court has struck down delegations on those grounds only twice, both in 1935 — Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan and A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States — but a bloc of current justices has signaled renewed interest. Today’s ruling didn’t need to revive nondelegation; the major questions doctrine did the work instead.

Congress Watched From the Sideline

Throughout this litigation, Congress possessed the authority to resolve the dispute cleanly. It could have passed legislation explicitly authorizing or revoking the tariffs. It could have amended IEEPA to clarify its scope. It could have reasserted its Article I power through the Congressional Review of Trade Authority Act or similar proposals that were introduced but never advanced.

It did none of these things. Republican members with genuine concerns about tariff impacts on constituents declined to force a legislative confrontation. Democrats found the tariffs politically complicated. The institutional incentives that lead Congress to shed difficult responsibilities operated exactly as they always do: let the courts take the heat.

Today, the courts did. The constitutional question Congress refused to answer has been answered for it.

The Refund Battle: $160 Billion in Limbo

The ruling does not automatically refund anything. The Court remanded the refund question to the Court of International Trade, which has authority under 28 U.S.C. § 1585 to order reliquidation and repayment of unlawfully collected duties. But the process is neither fast nor simple.

According to the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, U.S. Customs and Border Protection collected approximately $133.5 billion in IEEPA tariffs between January and December 2025, with cumulative collections reaching roughly $165 billion by January 2026. The potential refund obligation is estimated at up to $175 billion — a fiscal and administrative challenge with no modern precedent.

Importers who filed protests with CBP — the legally required step to preserve refund claims — are positioned to recover. The standard window is 180 days after goods are “liquidated” (finalized) by CBP. Importers who did not file timely protests may be barred from refund claims regardless of today’s ruling, a procedural trap that has caught many businesses unprepared.

For unliquidated entries — those not yet finalized by CBP — corrections can flow through the administrative Post Summary Correction process. For liquidated entries, the CIT will manage refund proceedings; trade attorneys expect the process to take 12–18 months at minimum. There is also a live question of whether the government will seek only prospective relief — stopping future collection — while resisting repayment of amounts already collected. That fight is now pending at the CIT.

The refunds, when they come, will go to importers, not consumers. Whether downstream prices fall depends on whether retailers pass the savings along — a market question the courts cannot answer.

What Remains Standing

Today’s ruling is significant, but it is not the end of executive trade authority. Section 232 tariffs — on steel, aluminum, and goods designated as national security threats — rest on different statutory ground and were not before the Court. Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods, covering intellectual property retaliation, also survive. Together, those programs are estimated to raise $635 billion over the next decade.

The administration may also seek new congressional authorization for tariff authority, or attempt to restructure trade measures under surviving statutes. The ruling forecloses IEEPA as a broad tariff vehicle but does not touch the other pillars.

What it does do — clearly and durably — is answer the question the major questions doctrine demanded: when the executive claims the power to reshape trillions of dollars in trade through emergency declaration, it must point to clear congressional authorization. For IEEPA tariffs, that authorization does not exist.

What It Means for Separation of Powers

The tariff power belongs to Congress. Today’s ruling, written by a Chief Justice appointed by a Republican president and joined by two of the most recently confirmed conservative justices, reaffirms that proposition. It applies the Court’s own major questions doctrine — developed in cases involving EPA climate rules and OSHA vaccine mandates — consistently against a Republican administration claiming emergency trade authority.

That consistency matters. The Court’s professed commitment to limiting executive overreach would have been difficult to credit had it bent when the president invoking emergency power was politically allied with the justices’ appointing party. It did not bend.

Whether Congress takes the ruling as an invitation to reclaim its Article I authority, or simply waits for the next administration to test a different emergency theory, remains to be seen. The courts have now held the line. The question of whether the democratic branches will is a different one — and it has no judicial answer.

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