Trump Tariff Appeal Heads to Patent-Heavy Specialist Court (1)

The next battleground in President Donald Trump’s tariff push is a technocratic federal appeals court that spends most of its time resolving intellectual property disputes.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday granted the US Justice Department’s emergency motion to pause a US Court of International Trade ruling that a 1977 law doesn’t give the president authority “to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.” The Trump administration immediately appealed.

The Federal Circuit has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over a variety of administrative courts, including the trade court, the Merit Systems Protection Board—which handles federal employment disputes—and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Compared with the regional circuit courts of appeals, it’s a relative stranger to the myriad court challenges to presidential power during both Trump administrations.

But given the importance of the tariffs to Trump’s agenda the appeals court judges will have to dive into the politically charged case, whether they want to or not.

The government argues the Wednesday trade court ruling “unilaterally disarms the United States in the face of the longstanding predatory trade practices of other countries” and the curtailing of the president’s tariff authority would lead to “catastrophic harms.” The Federal Circuit—with all 11 of its unsuspended active judges voting—granted a temporary stay of the trade court order while it considers whether to issue a longer stay for the duration of the appeal.

The Federal Circuit’s bread and butter, though, is patent disputes, which, at any given time, account for more than 60% of the court’s pending appeals. Cases from the New York City-based trade court accounted for just 3.2% of its 1,618 pending appeals, when the court last updated its statistics in April.

The specialist court was set up in 1982, combining several standalone technical appeals courts. The court’s former Chief Judge Howard Markey wrote that Congress created the Federal Circuit to promote greater uniformity after decades of decision making from divided regional circuit courts “had barnacled the patent law.”

Trump has yet to appoint a judge to the 12-member court, which has two active judges appointed by Joe Biden, five Barack Obama appointees, two George W. Bush appointees, one George H.W. Bush appointee, one Bill Clinton appointee, and one Ronald Reagan appointee—the currently suspended Pauline Newman, who’s also the country’s oldest active federal judge. None of the court’s seven senior-status judges are Trump appointees.

Trade Influence

While trade cases, involving tariffs and anti-dumping penalties, make up a small slice of the Federal Circuit judge’s workload, the court’s influence over trade policy has been described in an American University Law Review article as “immense.”

The upcoming tariff appeal won’t be the first time the court has been asked to bless or block a Trump tariff decision. In 2018, a three-judge panel consisting of now-Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore and Circuit Judges Timothy B. Dyk and Jimmie V. Reyna upheld a 30% tariff Trump imposed earlier in the year on solar panel imports to protect US manufacturers.

A trio of Canadian solar panel makers sued at the Court of International Trade over the tariff’s application to Canada, given the country’s status as a close trade partner and the fact that solar imports from the country accounted for a small sliver of the total. The Federal Circuit affirmed the CIT’s denial of an injunction in that case, emphasizing the uphill battle faced by challengers taking on presidentially imposed tariffs.

Under “decisions of this court, there are limited circumstances when a presidential action may be set aside if the President acts beyond his statutory authority,” Dyk wrote, “but such relief is only rarely available.”

V.O.S. Selections Inc., which challenged the tariffs alongside a number of state attorneys general, is represented by Liberty Justice Center.

The case is V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, Fed. Cir., 25-1812, mot. to stay granted in part 5/29/25.