Twenty-four states filed a lawsuit Thursday (March 5) to stop the tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed shortly after the Supreme Court blocked his earlier tariffs.
The lawsuit argues that tariffs are illegal because the president does not have the power to impose them, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a Thursday press release.
It contends that the tariffs do not meet the requirements of the law Trump cited when imposing the new tariffs, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, and that they violate the Constitution’s protection of the separation of power because only Congress has the power to impose tariffs, according to the release.
“Once again, President Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution to effectively raise taxes on consumers and small businesses,” James said in the release. “After the Supreme Court rejected his first attempt to impose sweeping tariffs, the president is causing more economic chaos and expecting Americans to foot the bill.”
The lawsuit asks the U.S. Court of International Trade to declare the tariffs illegal, prevent them from being implemented, and order that the costs of the tariffs be refunded to the states, per the release.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the administration will defend the new tariffs in court, Reuters reported Thursday.
“The President is using his authority granted by Congress to address fundamental international payments problems and to deal with our country’s large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,” Desai said, per the report.
The Supreme Court ruled Feb. 20 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize a president to impose tariffs.
The court said that Article 1 of the Constitution assigns Congress the authority to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,” a power that encompasses tariffs, and that IEEPA’s statutory language permitting the executive to “regulate … importation” could not reasonably be read to include taxation powers of unlimited scope.
Three days after that decision, on Feb. 23, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that countries that have “’Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to.”
