1:40President Donald Trump converses with journalists while on board Air Force One soon after departing from Busan, South Korea, heading toward Joint Base Andrews, Md., Oct. 30, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
In the period since his inauguration ten months prior, Donald Trump has been hit with a multitude of lawsuits in the legal system by progressive groups aiming to contest his political program.
However, the legal action concerning his wide-ranging global import duties that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court is not one of those.
The organization initiating the lawsuit is a not-for-profit body that, for the past decade, has regularly advocated in the courts for private property entitlements, freedom of expression, and other individual liberties, including a noteworthy judgment where the Supreme Court concluded that millions of public sector employees were no longer obligated to remit fees to labor unions whose viewpoints they did not concur with.
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after taking off from Busan, South Korea, en route to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Oct. 30, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
According to Jeffrey Schwab, chief legal advisor and interim director of legal proceedings at the Liberty Justice Center, pursuing a case to challenge the tariffs is in accordance with the organization’s impartial objective of upholding constitutional and statutory restrictions on governmental overreach.
"We operate under a tripartite system of governance. These separate branches are intended to have equal footing. My assessment is that we have been heading in the direction of an expansion of the executive branch's jurisdiction for several decades, and there is a point where it becomes problematic," Schwab remarked to ABC News.
Having submitted close to 140 legal complaints since its founding in 2011, The Liberty Justice Center has developed a standing as a legitimate legal advocate for numerous causes aligned with the right, but the tariff dispute has positioned it distinctly opposed to the president on his hallmark policy.
Schwab indicated that the impetus to litigate arose after he perused a blog entry penned by Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, wherein Somin articulated his conviction that the tariffs were both unconstitutional and unlawful, particularly considering the Supreme Court’s contemporary strategies concerning major inquiries and nondelegation principles.
"After reviewing that blog, I considered it a potentially compelling case to initiate with those contentions, and we established contact with Professor Soman, and we engaged in a deliberation," Schwab stated.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, April 2, 2025.Mark Schiefelbein/AP, FILE
And following Trump’s unveiling of his extensive tariffs on "Liberation Day" in April, the concept of a judicial challenge began to gather steam, with Soman and Schwab initiating efforts to pinpoint small business entities potentially interested in taking legal action. With Soman publishing a blog post entitled "Seeking Litigants to Contest Trump's IEEPA Tariffs in Court" to solicit plaintiffs for the Liberty Justice Center, Schwab conveyed that his electronic mailbox rapidly overflowed with prospective small business proprietors, who enthusiastically recounted how they had suffered losses as a result of the all-encompassing and sporadically haphazard tariffs.
"We encountered an overwhelmingly positive response from small enterprise leaders," Schwab recounted, noting that he had interviewed about 50 different small business managers. They ultimately resolved to represent five businesses, encompassing a wine and spirits distributor, fishing equipment supplier, plastics fabricator, cycling apparel company, and a creator of educational materials for children.
"These five entities are distinctly diverse. They possess variances in magnitude, span different industries, are located in distinct geographical areas, and we postulate that they are generally representative of the small business demographic within the United States," he elaborated.
Soon after Liberation Day, the Liberty Justice Center submitted their litigation to the Court of International Trade in New York, asserting that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not endow Trump with the authority to enforce sweeping tariffs independently. A panel of judges ultimately sided with their arguments, issuing a unanimous verdict in May that the tariffs were unlawful. The Trump administration lodged an appeal, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed their determination, although Trump was permitted to maintain the tariffs while the matter proceeded through the appellate process. On the upcoming Wednesday, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal is slated to present arguments on behalf of the businesses before the Supreme Court.
A view of the US Supreme Court on October 7, 2025, in Washington, DC.Andrew Caballero-reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
According to Oliver Dunford, senior legal counsel at the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation, the tariffs matter could potentially emerge as one of the most pivotal cases involving the separation of powers in recent annals, with Trump purporting to possess the purview to institute tariffs on any merchandise imported from any nation.
"Previous chief executives have stretched the boundaries, irrespective of their affiliations with the Republican or Democratic parties, and this form of discretionary rule-making is not unprecedented," Dunford observed. "The scope of this particular instance is undoubtedly distinct. It encompasses virtually every conceivable product, originating from practically every country, and the potential duration remains indefinite."
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
