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By Joshua Rhett Miller
Senior Reporter
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The Supreme Court's liberal minority helped strike down global tariffs imposed by President Trump on Friday, but differed slightly on how they arrived at the massive ruling.
The 6-3 decision by Chief Justice John Roberts, which immediately upends Trump's economic agenda, limits his attempt to expand presidential powers because the Constitution solely provided Congress the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, rather than the executive branch.
"The Framers recognized the unique importance of this taxing power — a power which 'very clear[ly]' includes the power to impose tariffs," Roberts wrote. "And they gave Congress 'alone . . . access to the pockets of the people.' The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch."
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Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented in the ruling, which centered around the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law authorizing the president to deal with any "unusual and extraordinary threat" outside of the United States, including the regulation of imports or exports.
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that IEEPA doesn't authorize the president to impose tariffs, but concluded the court "need not invoke the major questions doctrine because the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation amply support that result," according to the ruling.
Jackson also consulted "legislative history" in the landmark ruling, House and Senate reports from 1941 that accompanied IEEPA and its predecessor statute, the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 (TWEA), to determine Congress did not intend for IEEPA to authorize the executive branch to impose tariffs.
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"While probing Congress’s intent is the right inquiry, my colleagues speculate needlessly," Brown Jackson wrote. "In my view, the Court can, and should, consult a statute’s legislative history to determine what Congress actually intended the statute to do."
The Democratic-appointed justice said four pieces of legislative record back the ruling that Congress did not intend for IEEPA to authorize the executive branch to impose tariffs, including the House and Senate reports that accompanied TWEA to control foreign property during wartime. Some of TWEA's sections regarding this authority had lapsed, Jackson wrote.
"Accordingly, Congress amended TWEA in 1941, adding the subsection that includes the 'regulate . . . importation' language on which the President relies today," she wrote. "The reports explained Congress’s primary purpose for the 1941 amendment: shoring up the President’s ability to control foreign-owned property by maintaining and strengthening the “existing system of
foreign property control (commonly known as freezing control)."
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When Congress later enacted IEEPA in 1977 to limit the circumstances in which the president could exercise those emergency authorities, lawmakers kept the "regulate ... importation" language from TWEA, Jackson noted.
"The other two relevant pieces of legislative history — the Senate and House Reports that accompanied IEEPA — demonstrate that Congress’s intent regarding the scope of this statutory language remained the same," Jackson wrote. "As the Senate Report explained, Congress’s sole objective for the 'regulate ... importation' subsection was to grant the President the emergency authority to control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved.”
The principal dissent in the case "declines the help of legislative history," Jackson concluded.
"In short, in these cases, the legislative history provides helpful evidence of 'what Congress was trying to do' in IEEPA," she wrote. "Given that evidence, we need not speculate or, worse, step into Congress’s shoes and formulate our own views about what powers would be best to delegate to the President for use during an emergency. When Congress tells us why it has included certain language in a statute, the limited role of the courts in our democratic system of government — as interpreters, not lawmakers — demands that we give effect to the will of the people."
Trump, meanwhile, blasted the court's decision as a "disgrace" after he was informed during a private meeting with several governors, two people close to the matter told the Associated Press. Trump said he has "to do something about these courts," another source added.
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