Court Certifies Class Action for IEEPA Tariff Refunds

The US Court of International Trade has certified a class action that could give many importers a new route to recover IEEPA tariffs that remain outside CBP’s current administrative refund process.

In an October 8 ruling, Judge Richard K. Eaton approved the class action in Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States. The ruling does not require CBP to issue refunds yet, but it lets eligible importers pursue them together.

That distinction matters. The Supreme Court has already held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. The unresolved issue for many importers is how to obtain refunds where entries have liquidated, especially after they have become final.

What is this ruling?

The court certified an injunctive class under USCIT Rule 23(b2). The case seeks an order requiring CBP to liquidate or reliquidate covered entries without the unlawful IEEPA duties.

The certified class covers:

All importers of record who paid duties imposed by the challenged tariff orders between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, excluding entities that separately filed an action seeking to recover IEEPA duty payments.

The court found that the class shares the same central legal issue: whether entries subject to unlawful IEEPA duties must be liquidated or reliquidated without those duties. It rejected the government’s argument that different refund amounts make the claims too individualized for class treatment.

Judge Eaton’s reasoning is practical. The court noted that CBP already has the entry-level data and has used its CAPE system to process millions of entries. If the court later orders relief, the refund calculation would be handled through CBP’s systems rather than through a separate damages determination for every importer.

Who is affected?

The ruling is most relevant to importers of record that paid IEEPA duties during the covered period and have not already filed their own IEEPA refund lawsuit.

That may include small and mid-sized importers whose entries are no longer easily handled through the standard CAPE process. The court noted that some importers may not have pursued CAPE because of cost, effort, lack of awareness, or because their entries fall outside the categories CBP currently accepts.

CBP’s IEEPA Duty Refunds program has already returned substantial amounts through CAPE. But the court found that a meaningful group of importers remains outside the available administrative path, particularly where entries are finally liquidated and the importer did not file its own court case.

Importers that have already filed separate IEEPA litigation are expressly excluded from this class because they are pursuing relief through their own cases.

What does this mean for affected importers?

For qualifying importers, the class certification creates the possibility of court-ordered relief without each importer having to bring a separate lawsuit.

It does not mean an immediate refund. The government still must respond to the complaint, and the court has not yet issued the requested injunction. The court will now decide whether to order CBP to reprocess covered entries without IEEPA duties.

If it does, eligible importers could receive refunds, plus interest, through one shared case.

Importers should review their entry records, IOR information, liquidation dates, CAPE status, protests, and any active cases.

Those facts still affect what options remain available for each entry. Freight Right’s IEEPA tariff refund service can help importers identify duties paid and organize entries by their current refund path.

What does this mean for liquidated entries and Phase 3?

This ruling is particularly important for finally liquidated entries.

An entry generally becomes finally liquidated after the period for CBP’s voluntary reliquidation authority has passed. CBP has maintained that it needs a court order to reliquidate those entries. That position is why Phase 3 has been tied to importers that filed lawsuits and obtained court orders directing reliquidation.

The court noted that CBP deployed CAPE Phase 3 on October 6 for plaintiffs in more than 4,000 individual IEEPA cases. Those cases have a court order directing reliquidation, which gives CBP the authority it says it needs to process finally liquidated entries.

The new class action could extend that same concept beyond individual litigants. If the class ultimately wins the requested injunction, it could provide the court order needed for CBP to reliquidate covered class members’ entries, including entries that are already finally liquidated.

That is not guaranteed. The certification ruling is an important procedural win, but the final relief has yet to be decided. It also does not replace Phase 3 for importers already pursuing individual litigation. Instead, it may create a broader judicial route for importers who did not file separately.

Can consumers join the class action to get tariffs back?

No. This case covers importers of record, not consumers who paid higher prices. The importer of record is the party that filed the customs entry and paid the duties. CBP’s refund process is tied to that party’s entry records and deposits.

The class is certified under Rule 23(b2), which does not provide a normal opt-in or opt-out process. In other words, a consumer cannot sign up simply because a retailer or manufacturer increased prices due to tariffs.

A consumer could only be relevant in the unusual situation where that person or entity was itself the importer of record and directly paid IEEPA duties on a covered entry. For ordinary retail purchases, the consumer is not the party entitled to a customs-duty refund.

The ruling does not end the IEEPA refund process. It shows that the issue has moved beyond whether the tariffs were lawful and toward whether every affected importer will have a workable path to recover duties that CBP collected.