自10个月前上任以来，唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)已被寻求挑战其议程的进步组织起诉数百次。
这对他的全面全球关税的诉讼现在美国最高法院不在其中。
该诉讼背后的团体是一个非营利组织，在过去十年中，该组织一直在法庭上为私有财产权、言论自由和其他个人权利而斗争，包括最高法院做出的一项具有里程碑意义的决定，即数百万公共部门的工人不再需要向持不同立场的工会缴纳会费。
自由正义中心(Liberty Justice Center)高级律师兼诉讼临时主任杰弗里·施瓦布(Jeffrey Schwab)表示，提起诉讼挑战关税符合该组织的无党派目标，即执行宪法和法律对政府越权的限制。
“我们有三个政府部门。他们应该是同等的。施瓦布对美国广播公司新闻说:“我认为，在过去几十年里，我们一直倾向于扩大行政部门的权力，在某种程度上，这将是一个问题。”。
自2011年成立以来，自由正义中心(Liberty Justice Center)提起了近140起诉讼，巩固了作为许多右倾事业的法律力量的声誉，但关税案使其在总统的签名问题上与总统针锋相对。
施瓦布说，起诉的想法是在他阅读了乔治·梅森大学安东宁·斯卡利亚法学院教授伊利亚·索明的博客后产生的，索明在博客中表示，他认为关税是违宪和非法的，特别是考虑到最高法院最近对重大问题和非授权原则的态度。
“读了那篇博客后，我认为这将是一个有趣的案例，我们联系了索曼教授，并进行了讨论，”施瓦布说。
当特朗普在4月份的“解放日”宣布他的全面关税时，诉讼的想法开始获得动力，索曼和施瓦布开始寻找可能有兴趣起诉的小企业。索曼做了一个博客帖子名为“寻找原告在法庭上挑战特朗普的IEEPA关税”的施瓦布为自由正义中心征集原告，他说他的收件箱很快就挤满了感兴趣的小企业主，他们高兴地分享了他们是如何受到全面、有时是任意的关税的伤害。
“我们得到了小企业主的热烈响应，”施瓦布说，他回忆了采访大约50个不同的小企业主。他们最终涉足了五项业务，包括一家葡萄酒和烈酒进口商、一家钓鱼用品商、一家塑料制品生产商、一家自行车服装生产商和一家儿童学习用品生产商。
“他们是五家不同的多元化公司。他们有不同的规模、不同的行业、不同的地理位置，我们认为，他们很好地代表了美国的小企业群体。
解放日过后不久，自由正义中心(Liberty Justice Center)向纽约国际贸易法院提起诉讼，认为《国际紧急经济权力法》(International Emergency Economic Powers Act)没有赋予特朗普单方面征收全面关税的权力。一个法官小组最终同意了他们的案子，在5月份发布了一个一致的决定，即关税是非法的。特朗普政府提起上诉，美国联邦巡回上诉法院维持了他们的决定，尽管特朗普被允许在该问题通过法院时保持关税不变。周三，前代理副检察长尼尔·卡蒂亚尔将在最高法院代表企业进行辩论。
倾向于自由主义的太平洋法律基金会(Pacific Legal Foundation)高级律师奥利弗·邓福德(Oliver Dunford)表示，随着特朗普有权对从任何国家进口的任何商品征收关税，关税案可能成为近代史上最重要的分权案件之一。
邓福德说:“前几任总统都突破了极限，无论是共和党人还是民主党人，这种武断的规则制定并不新鲜。”“这在一定程度上是不同的。这几乎是每个国家的所有产品，谁知道什么时候会结束。”
What to know about the conservative advocacy group suing Trump over tariffs
Since taking office ten months ago, Donald Trump has been sued in court hundreds of times by progressive organizations seeking to challenge his agenda.
Thelawsuit over his sweeping global tariffsnow before the U.S. Supreme Court is not one of them.
The group behind the lawsuit is a nonprofit organization that, for the last decade, has consistently fought in court for private property rights, free speech, and other individual rights, including a landmark decision when the Supreme Court determined that millions of public sector workers no longer needed to pay dues to unions that took positions they disagreed with.
According to Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and interim director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, bringing a case to challenge the tariffs aligns with the organization’s nonpartisan goal of enforcing constitutional and statutory limits on government overreach.
"We have three branches of government. They're supposed to be coequal. I think we've been trending in the expansion of the executive branch's power for the last several decades, and at some point, it's going to be a problem," Schwab told ABC News.
Filing nearly 140 lawsuits since its founding in 2011, The Liberty Justice Center has cemented a reputation as a legal force for many right-leaning causes, but the tariffs case has put it squarely against the president on his signature issue.
Schwab said the idea to sue was hatched after he read a blog post by Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, in which Somin expressed his belief that the tariffs were both unconstitutional and illegal, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s recent approaches to major questions and nondelegation doctrine.
"After reading that blog, I thought that would be an interesting case to bring with those claims, and we reached out to Professor Soman, and we had a discussion," Schwab said.
And when Trump announced his sweeping tariffs on "Liberation Day" in April, the idea of a lawsuit began to gain momentum with Soman and Schwab beginning to seek out small businesses that might be interested in suing. With Soman making ablog posttitled "Looking for Plaintiffs to Challenge Trump's IEEPA Tariffs in Court" to solicit plaintiffs for the Liberty Justice Center, Schwab said his inbox quickly filled with interested small business owners, who happily shared how they were harmed by the sweeping and at times arbitrary tariffs.
"We got an overwhelming response of small business owners," said Schwab, who recounted interviewing about 50 different small business owners. They ultimately landed on five business, including a wine and spirits importer, fishing outfitter, plastics producer, cycling apparel maker, and producer of children’s learning kits.
"They are five different diverse companies. They're of different sizes, different industries, different geographic locations, and we think, represent the small business community in the United States very well," he said.
Shortly after Liberation Day, Liberty Justice Center filed their lawsuit in New York’s Court of International Trade, arguing that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give Trump the power to impose sweeping tariffs unilaterally. A panel of judges ultimately agreed with their case, issuing a unanimous decision in May that the tariffs were illegal. The Trump administration appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld their decision, though Trump was allowed to keep the tariffs in place while the issue made its way through the court. Come Wednesday, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal is set to argue on behalf of the businesses at the Supreme Court.
According to Oliver Dunford, senior attorney at the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation, the tariffs case could have the potential to be one of the most critical separation of powers cases in recent history, with Trump assuming the authority to impose tariffs on any item imported from any country.
"The previous Presidents have pushed the envelope, both Republicans and Democrats, and this kind of arbitrary rulemaking is not new," said Dunford. "This is on a scale that's certainly different. This is just about every product, just from just about every country, and who knows when it's going to end."
