The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would not fast-track a petition from two toy manufacturers challenging a major piece of President Trump’s tariffs program.
The court’s order was one sentence long and gave no reasons.
The companies’ request was unusual for several reasons. Petitions seeking review ordinarily come from the losing side, but the companies had won in front of a district court judge last month. They then sought to leapfrog the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which would ordinarily rule before the justices considered whether to grant review. And they asked the justices to move quickly, asking that they schedule arguments in September or October.
The companies — Learning Resources and hand2mind — said Mr. Trump’s tariffs had given rise to a national emergency warranting extraordinarily quick judicial action. They asked the court to order the government to respond to their petition by Monday.
“In light of the tariffs’ massive impact on virtually every business and consumer across the nation and the unremitting whiplash caused by the unfettered tariffing power the president claims,” the petition said, the companies’ challenges “cannot await the normal appellate process (even on an expedited timeline).”
In response, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, said the government would file its opposition to the petition on the usual schedule — by July 17 — and that the justices could rule on it over the summer.
The manufacturers argued that the law Mr. Trump relied on, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize tariffs. Until Mr. Trump acted, their companies’ brief said, “no president had ever invoked I.E.E.P.A. to impose a single tariff or duty on goods in the statute’s nearly 50-year history.”
In a separate and broader challenge, the Court of International Trade also ruled against the administration’s tariffs program. A different appeals court, the Federal Circuit, is set to hear arguments in that case next month. Both lower court rulings have been paused, allowing Mr. Trump to press forward with his tariffs.
Once the appeals courts have ruled, appeals to the Supreme Court are all but certain, and the justices are quite likely to take up one or both of them at that point.
The toy companies sought to use an unusual procedure to bypass the D.C. Circuit, “certiorari before judgment.” The procedure used to be rare, mostly reserved for national crises like Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor or Truman’s seizure of the steel industry.
Mr. Sauer, the solicitor general, told the justices that the toy companies’ case did not require expedited treatment.
“Certiorari before judgment,” he wrote, quoting from the court’s rules, “is an exceptional procedure reserved for cases ‘of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this court.’”
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
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