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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17746 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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The Court also opened an entirely different set of worms, as it did not adjudicate if the tariff revenue that had been collected has to be refunded, or even who a refund would go to. I predict great long !lawyer bills~ debates over how, if tariffs are taxes on Americans, which Americans are owed the tax refunds.

I feel like the only practicable way to do this is to pay refunds to the people who paid the tariffs to the government. In some sense increased costs to consumers were caused by the tariffs but good luck proving that to a court (absent some kind of contractual provision for the scenario).

While I will defer to others for the legalese analysis, I am also interested in what sorts of quid-pro-quos the internal court politics might have had for Roberts to have led the majority here. There are a host of cases on the docket this term, with politically-relevant issues ranging from mail-in ballots to redistricting. While I think the tariffs case was outside any typical 'we accept this case in exchange for accepting that case' deal over which cases get heard, I will be interested if the administration gets any 'surprise' wins.

In terms of decision authorship the general process is that:

1. If the Chief Justice is in the majority, they decide who authors the opinion of the court.

2. If the Chief Justice is not in the majority, the most senior justice in the majority decides.

I think the justices try to maintain roughly even ratios of opinion authorship so maybe Roberts authoring this one meant foregoing authoring some other one but ultimately he's the one in control over who authors an opinion he's in the majority of. I am skeptical there was any horse trading involved to get to 6 votes either. Gorsuch's concurrence has a length section where he disagrees with the dissent's analysis, which would be enough for 5.

I feel like the only practicable way to do this is to pay refunds to the people who paid the tariffs to the government. In some sense increased costs to consumers were caused by the tariffs but good luck proving that to a court (absent some kind of contractual provision for the scenario).

This is such a nightmare to me, because the company-I-work-for's customers absolutely would expect for me to refund the tariff back to them in return, and that's going to be a full time role to calculate and disburse those funds.

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