SCOTUS AM

March 4, 2026 — SCOTUS March Madness Day 3

Mar 4, 2026

0302 AM SCOTUS TT·0302 March SCOTUS News Update daily AM YT

After the Supreme Court overturned the IEEPA tariffs, roughly 1,000 companies filed for refunds. The government told the lower court to wait. The court said no.

After the Supreme Court issued its tariff ruling (finding IEEPA tariffs exceeded the president's delegated authority), the Trump administration tried to stall the Court of Federal Claims from allowing tariff-refund cases to move forward. The Court of Federal Claims denied their request, dissolved the August stay, and restarted the lower court proceedings. Those cases involve companies seeking to recover tariffs collected under the now-overturned orders. Bryan noted: the government had been "acting like they might not have any money left" — the practical question of whether the federal government can actually fund thousands of simultaneous refunds loomed over the tariff cases.

IEEPA tariff authority; Tariff Actlower courts restarted.

Constitutional question: Who bears the cost when the Supreme Court retroactively invalidates an executive branch revenue stream? The downstream question of government solvency when large-scale tariff refund obligations materialize.

Montgomery v. Caribe · 24-1238

A truck driver got hit on the highway and wants to sue the broker who hired the negligent driver — but federal law may have taken that right away from every victim in America.

Sean Montgomery's tractor trailer was struck by a driver employed by Caribe, hired by broker C.H. Robinson. Sean sued all three, but C.H. Robinson argued that a federal law — the FAAAA (Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, extended to trucking) — preempts Illinois's state negligent hiring tort. The statute expressly preempts "price, route, or service" regulations but explicitly preserves states' "safety regulatory authority." The question: is a state negligent hiring tort a safety law (state authority preserved) or an economic law (federally preempted)? Paul Clement argued. An unusual coalition — California, Idaho, Arkansas, Ohio, Maryland, and 25 more states — filed a joint amicus brief arguing tort law is safety law. Two other states (Georgia, Nebraska) filed the opposite brief. Bryan's takeaway: the tort law spectrum (where a state lands on safety vs. economy in negligent hiring) is itself a political-values decision that 29 states said they didn't want Congress to make for them.

Constitutional question: Whether the FAAAA's explicit safety-law carve-out preserves states' traditional authority to regulate road safety through tort law — and whether Congress intended to federalize the entire negligent-hiring liability question when it extended airline deregulation law to trucking.

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