Advocacy Group Opposes Stay, Transfer of IEEPA Case in Western District of Texas

The U.S. sought a stay of the case until the federal district court decides on a motion to transfer (see 2507280059). It supported its motion to stay in its own brief.

NCLA’s motion for judgment raised the same points it has successfully argued in prior proceedings -- that the IEEPA law doesn’t grant the president the authority to impose tariffs based on the major questions doctrine and the statute’s legislative history. The Court of International Trade ruled against the government in the group’s lead case, V.O.S. Selections v. United States (see 2505280068), and the government is in the process of appealing that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (see 2505290039).

In its concurrent opposition to the government’s motion to stay its FireDisc case, NCLA said the U.S. “fails to meet the most basic requirements for the extraordinary relief it seeks.” It argued that the government only sought the stay to avoid responding to its motion for judgment, saying that justification wasn’t adequate.

The U.S. claimed that it shouldn't have to respond to the FireDisc motion for judgment because doing so “would be a ‘waste’ of its ‘resources,’” NCLA said. But the government has already filed other briefs responding to NCLA’s motions for judgment in NCLA’s other proceedings, the group said.

“At the same time the government is claiming hardship from modifying existing briefs, Plaintiffs are suffering devastating damage from the illegal tariffs this lawsuit challenges,” it said.

In its third brief, filed Aug. 11, the advocacy group also opposed the transfer motion. CIT has split with at least one district court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, over whether the trade court has exclusive jurisdiction to hear IEEPA challenges (see 2506030020). District courts in California (see 2506030020), Florida (see 2505210027) and Montana (see 2504250063) have all transferred their own cases to CIT.

The U.S. argued in its transfer motion that the FireDisc case should be transferred because it “arises out of a[ ] law of the United States providing for … tariffs,” NCLA said, and specifically out of “the executive orders and [Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. (HTSUS)] modifications that implemented the IEEPA tariffs.”

NCLA argued that its FireDisc case could be distinguished from V.O.S. Selections -- brought directly to the trade court -- because CIT didn’t expressly rule in V.O.S. Selections that the group’s IEEPA challenge arises from the HTS. The other recent decisions from California, Florida and Montana, meanwhile, “all assumed the action ‘ar[ose] out of’ IEEPA, and only IEEPA” but none of them based their transfer decisions on the “novel theory” that their cases arose specifically from Trump’s executive orders and subsequent changes to the HTS, it said.

Supporting its motion to stay, the government said that continuing to the summary judgment stage in the FireDisc case would be “inefficient.” It also called the advocacy group’s motion for judgment “premature,” saying CBP hadn’t even determined yet that the importers involved in the suit paid their IEEPA tariffs and “Defendants are not required to just take plaintiffs’ word for it.”

It argued that motions to stay are decided at the discretion of a court, lacking a specific standard. And it said that the importers hadn’t demonstrated that the damage they would incur as a result of the stay would be non-recoverable, as they “can sue in the CIT to obtain a refund of any non-liquidated tariffs that were unlawfully collected from them.”