Why IEEPA Refund Lawsuits Just Surged, and What It Means If You Haven't Filed

Updated October 12, 2026: Two things have changed since we published this post. CBP opened CAPE Phase 3 on October 6, but only for importers who sued and have court-ordered reliquidation. And on October 8, the Court of International Trade certified a class of importers who haven't filed their own case, though no refund has been ordered for that class yet. See our class action update.

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Importers filed more than 200 IEEPA tariff refund lawsuits at the Court of International Trade (CIT), the federal court that hears customs disputes, in the roughly three weeks after July 20. Compare that to about 35 a week or fewer through most of June.

That's not a random spike. It's importers responding to a hard fact: for a specific slice of your entries, a lawsuit may be the only confirmed way back to your money right now.

If your IEEPA entries finalized months ago, this is the development to understand. Not because the law changed. Because the practical path to your refund did.

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Why finalized entries are the ones driving this

Most IEEPA refunds are moving through CBP's own administrative system, no lawsuit required. That system has paid out on a large share of the roughly $166 billion in IEEPA duties collected from an estimated 330,000 importers.

But the government has drawn a line. Entries that CBP finalized, meaning liquidated, more than about 80 days before the refund process reached them fall outside that administrative reach. The government's position is that those entries need a court order.

That group is smaller in dollar terms, an estimated $10 billion to $11 billion of the $166 billion total, or roughly 7% of the money at stake. But if your entries are in it, the percentage doesn't matter. The mechanism does.

Not sure whether your finalized entries fall into that group? Call us at (602) 649-3887 and we'll walk through it with you.

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The trade court started backing this up, and filings followed

For months, many importers held off on suing. CBP's Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries tool, known as CAPE, launched April 20 and started paying refunds, and a lot of companies expected their entries to get swept in eventually.

That changed in July. The CIT judge overseeing these cases began issuing orders directing CBP to reliquidate, meaning redo the final accounting and remove the IEEPA duties, on finalized entries belonging to importers who had already sued.

Once it became clear that being a plaintiff came with a real advantage on finalized entries, more importers started filing. The court had about 3,700 refund suits on its docket as of mid-July, with a few hundred more filed since.

This is exactly the kind of filing our trade law team handles: identifying which of your entries actually need a CIT case, not just an administrative claim, and getting the complaint filed correctly under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i) so your rights don't lapse while the bigger fight plays out.

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CBP's own fix opened only for importers who sued

Here's the part that changes the calculus for anyone still waiting. CBP has been working on opening its administrative refund system to finalized entries too, which many importers hoped would let them get paid without suing.

The agency had targeted a launch by the end of July. It missed that target.

CBP opened Phase 3 on October 6, but only for plaintiffs with court-ordered reliquidation who gave CBP a valid importer of record number by July 30. Importers who never sued still can't use it. A class certified on October 8 could become a second path, but it has no refund order yet, and every week of waiting is a week those entries sit exposed to the filing deadline.

Want us to check where your entries stand before you decide whether to wait or file? Find out if your imports qualify for an IEEPA refund.

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An appeal is still hanging over all of this

None of this is fully settled. The government has taken a separate fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the court that sits above the CIT, challenging the trade court's authority to order these refunds at all for finalized entries.

That appeal isn't about whether the IEEPA tariffs were legal. That question is closed. It's about whether the trade court can require refunds on finalized entries in the first place, and for whom.

Foley & Lardner's Greg Husisian, who tracks this litigation closely, has said a resolution "could take a year" even if the government ultimately loses. That timeline is part of why some importers are suing now instead of waiting to see how the appeal shakes out.

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Who's holding off, and why that's a bigger gamble for some than others

Not every importer with finalized entries has sued. The reasons split pretty cleanly by size.

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Larger importers are weighing optics against certainty

Some bigger companies with finalized entries are waiting to see whether the appeal opens up access to CBP's system without a lawsuit. For a company with a large refund at stake, the math can favor patience, especially if there's no hard deadline forcing a decision yet.

Others are wary of looking like they're in a drawn-out legal fight with the federal government, even when the fight is really just about getting back money the Supreme Court already said was collected unlawfully.

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Smaller importers may not realize they need to act, or may not be able to

Smaller importers often had a customs broker handle their earlier, administrative refunds. That's routine work a broker can do.

A lawsuit is different. It has to be brought by the importer as a party and handled by an attorney, and some smaller companies don't realize that shift has happened until it's too late. For the smallest importers, the cost of pursuing a claim can start to rival the size of the refund itself, which is part of why some of this money may never get claimed at all.

That gap, between knowing you're entitled to a refund and actually being positioned to collect it, is where we spend most of our time with clients.

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What this means if your entries are finalized

Start with one question. Are any of your IEEPA entries liquidated for more than about 80 days, and have you filed suit?

If the answer is finalized and no lawsuit, you're in the group this whole fight is about. The CIT's window to hear these cases runs two years from when the duties were paid, and the earliest entries start hitting that deadline in early 2027.

Waiting for CBP's administrative fix to catch up is a bet on a timeline the agency has already missed once. At Frost Law AZ, our attorneys handle this from the entry-by-entry data review through the CIT filing and the refund itself, working alongside your customs broker rather than around them.

Not sure where your finalized entries stand or whether the deadline is closer than it looks? Tell us what you're working with in the form below, and we'll give you a straight answer.