A legal doctrine used by conservatives to fight Biden-era environmental policies has helped deal a decisive blow to a central plank of President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
In a 6-3 opinion Friday, the court found the president lacked authority to impose tariffs on a broad swath of foreign goods under a law meant to address national emergencies.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in Learning Resources v. Trump, found that the federal government had violated a legal theory — known as the major questions doctrine — that says Congress must clearly allow executive action on issues of economic or political significance.
Roberts, who invoked the same doctrine in 2022 to invalidate an Obama-era climate rule, on Friday rebuffed arguments by the Trump administration and some of his own colleagues in the court’s conservative supermajority that major questions does not apply in emergency situations or matters of foreign affairs.
“The Government and the principal dissent attempt to avoid application of the major questions doctrine on several grounds,” Roberts wrote. “None is convincing.”
Not all members of the majority thought the doctrine should apply in the tariffs case.
Justice Elena Kagan, who led a concurring opinion joined by the other two members of the court’s liberal wing, wrote that while she agreed Trump’s tariffs should be struck down, there were other ways to reach that decision. She pointed back to her 2022 dissent in West Virginia v. EPA, where she criticized her conservative colleagues for inventing the major questions doctrine to undercut the federal government’s authority to regulate a massive source of climate pollution.
“[S]traight-up statutory construction resolves this case for me,” she wrote on Friday. “I need no major-questions thumb on the interpretive scales.”
In a separate concurring opinion, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch also cited Kagan’s dissent in West Virginia to argue that she and the rest of the court’s liberal members should reconsider their view of the doctrine.
“In the past, they have criticized the major questions doctrine for two main reasons. The doctrine, they have suggested, is a novelty without basis in law. And, they have argued, the doctrine is rooted in an ‘anti-administrative-state stance’ that prevents Congress from employing executive agency officials to ‘d[o] important work,’” Gorsuch wrote, quoting from Kagan’s 2022 dissent. “Today, the critics proceed differently.”
The court found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give the president the authority to impose sweeping tariffs after declaring a pair of national emergencies. The statute allows the president to respond to an “unusual or extraordinary threat” from other nations. The 1977 law does not mention the use of tariffs and had not been used previously to impose tariffs.
The Trump administration had argued that it could use IEEPA to impose tariffs because the statute included language about the regulation of imported goods. The president cited two national emergencies: the flow of illicit drugs across U.S. borders, and the “lack of reciprocity” in international trade to justify tariffs on goods from U.S. trading partners.
Small businesses, led by Learning Resources and V.O.S. Selections, sued the administration, alongside a coalition of Democratic-led states. New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) hailed the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it a “critical victory for the rule of law and our economy.”
A Supreme Court ruling that upheld Trump’s tariffs, Gorsuch wrote in his concurrence, could have opened the door for a future Democratic president to impose tariffs on gas-fueled vehicles to curb planet-warming emissions.
“[W]ithout doctrines like major questions, our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man,” Gorsuch wrote.
Three members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — said they would have upheld Trump’s tariffs.
Kavanaugh, who penned the dissenting opinion, found that Congress had clearly authorized the president to impose tariffs and wrote that the major questions doctrine should not apply in matters of foreign affairs.
“In foreign affairs cases, courts read the statute as written and do not employ the major questions doctrine as a thumb on the scale against the President,” he wrote.
Kavanaugh, who frequently votes with Roberts, called the chief justice’s reading of the doctrine in the tariffs case a “significant change.”
“Will the Court apply the major questions doctrine in the foreign affairs context again in the future?” Kavanaugh wrote. “Or is this a ticket good for one day and one train only? Time will tell.”
Trump rebuked the court’s ruling during a press conference and thanked the dissenting justices for voting to uphold his plans.
“I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” Trump said, adding that he had identified other avenues to impose tariffs.
Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.
Correction: An earlier version of this report said the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs on major questions grounds. The majority of the court rejected the president’s arguments on statutory grounds.
