Overview
- The Court voted 6–3 to invalidate use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for sweeping tariffs, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion.
- Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority, and Gorsuch concurred that the major questions doctrine bars the expansive tariff power the administration claimed.
- The administration responded within hours by invoking a different statute to levy a temporary import surcharge first set at 10 percent and then raised to 15 percent.
- President Trump denounced the decision as ridiculous and attacked the justices in the majority, including his own appointees.
- A First Amendment scholar, Rodney Smolla, criticized the president’s personal broadsides as unpresidential and petty, noting IEEPA had never been used to impose such broad tariffs.