We could learn fairly soon what the Supreme Court thinks of Donald Trump’s tariff powers. His administration filed a petition to the justices Wednesday night seeking high court review, as well as a motion to expedite the case. The latter filing said the plaintiffs who just beat the administration at the appeals court don’t oppose the justices hearing the case or doing so on an expedited basis.
If the high court adheres to the proposed speedy schedule, then the justices will decide by Sept. 10 whether to take the case. (That would be moving very fast by high court standards.) On the expedited timeline, the parties would submit their briefs ahead of a hearing the first week in November. The justices wouldn’t be on a deadline to rule after that (they usually decide the term’s cases by July); although if they agree to expedited consideration, then their ruling on tariffs could come much sooner.
Whenever it would come, such a ruling carries great implications for the economy and executive power during a presidential term in which the Roberts Court has already granted Trump expansive powers.
A divided appeals court ruled against the administration in the tariffs case last week but put its ruling on hold until mid-October to allow time to appeal. The administration isn’t waiting for the deadline to run out, writing in its motion to expedite that the appellate ruling “has disrupted highly impactful, sensitive, ongoing diplomatic trade negotiations, and cast a pall of legal uncertainty over the President’s efforts to protect our country by preventing an unprecedented economic and foreign-policy crisis.”
Whether or not the justices agree to expedited review, taking the case would add another momentous dispute to a term already stocked with important appeals on voting rights, campaign finance and more. The term starts Oct. 6 and the justices have already published their hearing calendars for October and November, but they can add cases to their docket and calendar however they like. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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