‘Come Get It’: Leahy Predicts Long Legal Fight Over Tariff Refunds

Kaitlin Housler
Supreme Court justices

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in a 6-3 decision, The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, Nashville Tea Party Founder Ben Cunningham, and president of the Federalist Society chapter in Middle Tennessee, Grant Starrett, analyzed both the legal reasoning and political fallout of the ruling.

On Friday, the Court held in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump that the president exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), concluding the 1977 statute does not authorize broad, unilateral tariffs of “unlimited amount, duration, or scope.”

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

Leahy, on Friday’s edition of his talk radio show The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, highlighted what he called the “curve ball” in the split between Roberts and Kavanaugh, who have often voted together.

Starrett, a Vanderbilt Law School graduate, said he had predicted the president might lose the case, but was unsure as to which justices would side against the president.

“I will say I couldn’t exactly predict who was gonna be on each side. But at the same time… there’s this long tradition in which Supreme Court justices will kind of hue close to the person who appointed them. But as soon as that person’s out of office, they try and find their own voice. And in this case, I think that even though the president is back in office, you’re seeing that they are finding their own voices,” Starrett explained.

“This isn’t a shocking opinion… The only thing really shocking about it, to be honest, is the fact that it came so early,” he added.

Starrett called the Roberts-Kavanaugh divide “a big disagreement,” noting, “Roberts and Kavanaugh have been the closest voting pair since Kavanaugh went on to the court.”

Pivoting to the substance of the ruling, Starrett explained the Court’s reliance on the “major questions” doctrine.

“When Congress chooses to delegate authority on something extremely significant economically or otherwise… they need to be extremely clear about what it is that they’re delegating. They can’t just say, ‘President, figure it out’,” he said.

According to Starrett, the majority signaled that Congress could explicitly authorize such tariff powers if it wished.

“If indeed Congress intended to delegate this exact power to the president, then what is required is for Congress to say that exactly,” he explained.

Leahy pressed the question of whether Congress might codify broader tariff authority to satisfy the Court’s demand for clarity, to which Cunningham was skeptical.

“They’ve had the opportunity to help the president out in so many ways and they have been basically impotent… there’s not, frankly, a whole lot of optimism on my part that they’ll jump in and help, especially in an election year,” he said.

Starrett suggested the ruling underscores separation-of-powers concerns.

“We want clear separation of powers. We want to know really clearly what one branch can do and what branch cannot. But as Thomas notes in his dissent there’s history here that has to be wrestled with. And what is it that the president has historically engaged in and how does it interact with foreign policy and what does that look like?” he said.

With regard to implementation, Cunningham predicted protracted litigation over previously collected tariffs, saying, “There’s gotta be a flurry of litigation… in terms of refunding all of this.”

However, he speculated the president may resist repayment efforts, to which Leahy agreed.

“Trump is gonna say, ‘Come get it guys.’ And it’s gonna take years. He’s not giving the money up,” Leahy said.

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.

 

 

 

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