by Dennis Crouch
Two weeks after the Supreme Court declared the IEEPA tariffs illegal, and two days after the Federal Circuit issued its mandates returning the case to the trial court, U.S. Customs and Border Protection was still liquidating import entries with the unlawful duties baked in. No refunds had been issued. White House controlled CBP Automated Commercial Environment system kept churning through previously filed entries as if Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), had never happened.
In Atmus Filtration, Inc. v. United States (Ct. Int’l Trade Mar. 4, 2026), Judge Richard Eaton issued an order that goes well beyond the individual case before him. Eaton declared that “all importers of record whose entries were subject to IEEPA duties are entitled to the benefit of the Learning Resources decision” and directed CBP to liquidate all unliquidated entries “without regard to the IEEPA duties.” For entries already liquidated but not yet final, CBP must reliquidate on the same terms. The order applies regardless of whether an importer has filed its own complaint. To hold otherwise, Judge Eaton wrote, “would be to thwart the efficient administration of justice and to deny those importers who have filed suit the efficient resolution of their claims, and to deny entirely importers who have not filed suit the benefit of the Learning Resources decision.” The CIT’s Chief Judge has designated Eaton as the sole judge for all IEEPA refund cases, and Eaton has scheduled a closed conference for March 6 at which the government must present a plan for administering refunds without requiring each of the thousands of affected importers to file individual complaints.
The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) is an Article III federal court with exclusive jurisdiction over civil actions arising from federal laws governing import transactions, tariffs, and international trade. 28 U.S.C. § 1581. Located in New York City, the CIT has nine judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. There is a difference with other Federal Courts that by statute, no more than five of the nine judges may belong to the same political party. The court functions as a specialized trial court, and its decisions are appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The CIT's jurisdiction includes challenges to customs duties, trade adjustment assistance, and certain agency determinations by the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce.
The order is striking for several reasons. The Supreme Court’s February 20 opinion held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs, but it said nothing about refunds, timelines, or administrative mechanics. See Dennis Crouch, Forthwith: Federal Circuit Issues Mandates in V.O.S. Selections, Clearing the Way for $175 Billion Refund Reckoning, Patently-O (Mar. 2, 2026). The Federal Circuit’s per curiam mandate order on March 2 declined the government’s request for a 90-day stay and sent the case back to the CIT, but it likewise prescribed no specific remedy. That left the CIT as the institution responsible for translating a constitutional ruling into an operational refund process covering an estimated $175 billion in collections. Judge Eaton has now taken the first concrete step, and it is a broad one.
The extension of relief to non-litigants is the most legally aggressive feature of the order. More than 2,000 importer lawsuits are pending at the CIT, but thousands more importers paid IEEPA duties without filing suit. Eaton’s reasoning rests on the CIT’s nationwide jurisdiction and the nature of the Supreme Court’s ruling: because the tariffs were held to exceed presidential authority as a matter of statutory interpretation, every importer who paid them was harmed by the same legal error. Requiring each to file a separate complaint would multiply litigation costs, burden the court’s docket, and produce identical outcomes in case after case.
Judge Eaton’s order also confronts a threshold objection head-on. Last year, in Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831 (2025), the Supreme Court held that “universal injunctions are impermissible.” Eaton reasoned that CASA does not control here. The Supreme Court’s analysis in CASA addressed whether federal courts possess equitable authority under the Judiciary Act of 1789 to issue orders binding non-parties. But the CIT was established nearly 200 years later under the Customs Courts Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-417, and Congress gave it both national geographic jurisdiction and exclusive subject matter jurisdiction over import-related claims. 28 U.S.C. § 1581. The Supreme Court itself acknowledged that exclusivity in Learning Resources, agreeing that these claims fall within the CIT’s exclusive jurisdiction. Eaton’s logic follows from that structure: if no other court can hear these claims, then an order directing CBP to liquidate all affected entries without IEEPA duties does not bind parties in some other forum. It is not an impermissable universal injunction; it is the only court with jurisdiction doing its job. Eaton reinforced the point with the Uniformity Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1, which requires that “all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
Based upon prior statements from President Trump and the Treasury Secretary, they will likely appeal as a mechanism to delay repayment for as long as possible. Secretary Bessent stated publicly that refunds would not issue until the CIT ordered them, and President Trump suggested the refund question would “get litigated for the next two years.” The government has 60 days to appeal to the Federal Circuit, and a motion to stay the order pending appeal seems almost certain given the scale of the refund obligation and the contested question of whether a single CIT judge can direct CBP to provide relief to importers who are not parties before the court.