Today is opinion day at the Supreme Court and they have definitely started things off with a bang. The Supreme Court has ruled that Trump doesn’t have authority to issue many of the tariffs he has been issuing. That means the law he was invoking didn't let him do it:
We have the tariffs decision. Chief Justice John Roberts rules against the President. https://t.co/iUUHGHU7GT
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 20, 2026
NEW: The Supreme Court has held that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.https://t.co/BKgNq0lxKW
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) February 20, 2026
We are doing this as a quick, breaking news type story, so we are not going to do a deep analysis. But we will note that we are seeing this in the opinion:
ROBERTS, C. J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A–1, and II–B, in which SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, GORSUCH, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II–A–2 and III, in which GORSUCH and BARRETT, JJ., joined. GORSUCH, J., and BARRETT, J., filed concurring opinions. KAGAN, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which SOTOMAYOR and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. KAVANAUGH, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS and ALITO, JJ., joined.
That tells us that it is a 6-3 decision, with Thomas, Kavanaugh and Alito dissenting, and everyone else at least agreeing on the outcome of the majority, but not the reasoning. Indeed, the majority is very fractured, so that certain parts of Roberts’ decision represent the majority and certain parts do not. So… deep analysis is likely to be very complicated.
And naturally, we have not analyzed who is right nor have we analyzed if the Supremes have indicated at all what the remedy is. Is it a complete refund?—because that would be a huge transfer of money if that is what they do and from oral argument, it wasn’t clear that the justices were on board with that. So, there is a lot unsaid and unanalyzed, here. That’s just the nature of breaking news.
That being said, Trump has used tariffs as a significant foreign policy tool and the Supreme Court just took that away. Right or wrong, that’s a huge blow for Trump’s strategy.
Some quick analysis:
Supreme court ruling on Trumps illegal tariffs is another reason to impeach Trump. Trumps unrepairable damage is reckless and needs impeachment.
— Rob (@canadamcl) February 20, 2026
Imagine thinking a president should be impeached every time the Supreme Court disagrees with him.
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 Supreme Court overturns Trump's tariffs.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) February 20, 2026
The immediate question is whether Trump uses this as an off-ramp to ditch his tariff policy, or if he simply reimposes them using other mechanisms, which he has quite a few of available to him. I would bet on the latter, and that they'll be reimposed in short order.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) February 20, 2026
It's gonna be weird next week when Trump reimposes most of his tariffs and all the people celebrating their demise today are like, wait a minute.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) February 20, 2026
Is that possible? *shrugs*
Yup, leave it to the SC to punt on the refund question Roberts himself pointed out was the thorniest issue during oral arguments. This gets worse before it gets better, as I doubt Trump relents, but does this mean there are no tariffs right now? Does anyone know how this works? https://t.co/oDD8e4UWnd
— Confessions of a Conservative (@TwisteChristian) February 20, 2026
This actually reminds me about an element of Brown v. Board of Education. Few people know of this, but the initial decision punted on the question of remedy. In that case, there was a second decision, Brown v. Board of Education (II), which addressed how they were basically going to desegregate the whole country. We are not aware of the Supreme Court planning a second opinion in this case, though.
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