An attorney for a group of Blackfeet Nation tribal members who sued the Trump administration over tariffs levied against Canada last year said a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the tariffs helps their own case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Attorney Monica Tranel, representing state Sen. Susan Webber, Jonathan St. Goddard, Rhonda Mountain Chief and David Mountain Chief, said Friday’s decision by the high court “helps our argument because it was a very clear delineation of the separation of powers.”
“The executive branch does not have constitutional power to impose tariffs on tribal commerce,” Tranel told the Daily Montanan in a phone call.
The plaintiffs originally filed the lawsuit in April in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the United States of America, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, arguing that the tariffs levied by the administration against Canada violate Indigenous treaty rights and exceed presidential authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled on a different case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which overturned tariffs levied by the Trump administration against many of the world’s countries last year under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 decision that said Congress alone holds the power to tax, and the Trump administration was not justified in invoking emergency powers.
The legal challenges against the tariffs came from several small businesses and a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general, cases that the high court consolidated. The argument challenged the administration’s reliance on the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, to levy tariffs and regulate imports into the U.S.
Roberts wrote in the opinion that Trump’s use of emergency tariffs powers upset the balance of powers in the government, and replaced “the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking.”
Tranel said that the suit Webber filed has many similarities but a key difference — the focus on Tribal law — and they are seeking a constitutional determination of the separation of powers between the executive branch and the Indian Commerce Clause, which gives the power to regulate commerce among Indian Tribes to Congress.
In a court filing dated Feb. 22, Tranel argued that while the Supreme Court established that the Trump administration has no authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, the question over regulating tribal commerce was still unresolved.
“This court can — and should — apply the Supreme Court’s separation-of-powers paradigm to recognize that the Executive similarly lacks any constitutional authority to regulate tribal commerce,” Tranel wrote.
The case includes a jurisdictional question. Webber initially filed the case in U.S. District Court in Montana, but it was transferred to the Court of International Trade, which has jurisdiction over foreign commerce.
But the plaintiffs appealed to the Ninth Circuit instead, arguing that the Court of International Trade doesn’t have jurisdiction over the Indian Commerce Clause and treaty law, and it should remain within the Montana District Court.
“The Indian Commerce Clause vests exclusive power in Congress to regulate commerce with Indian Tribes, and federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction to hear constitutional challenges by tribal members asserting those rights,” Tranel wrote. “The Supreme Court’s decision … affirms the logical paradigm that federal courts must decide constitutional questions of tribal commerce.”
However, another status report filed by the federal government in the case on Feb. 20, argued that the case does belong in the Court of International Trade, due to a footnote in the Supreme Court decision that states U.S. district courts lacked the jurisdiction for the case.
The federal government seeks to dismiss the appeal to the Ninth Circuit on the basis of that footnote, and affirm the district court’s transfer order to the Court of International Trade.