Ah, nothing says “urgent crisis” quite like two toy companies begging the court to fast-track their case against tariffs. It’s not every day you see teddy bears and Lego blocks at the heart of a legal whirlwind.
In a twist that could only make sense in a world where economic logic is as pliable as Play-Doh, Learning Resources and hand2mind have decided that the best way to challenge Trump’s tariffs is to skip the line and go straight to the Supreme Court. You’ve got to admire their chutzpah—who knew toy companies had such a penchant for constitutional drama?
Their approach is peculiar, to say the least. Typically, the losing side in a legal battle cries for justice, but here we have the winners demanding a Supreme Court showdown, all while skipping over the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If this were a board game, we’d be calling it Monopoly: Legal Edition.
The odds of the court granting such a wish? Slimmer than a Barbie doll’s waistline. But when it comes to challenging the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, why not try every trick in the book? After all, no president had dared use the I.E.E.P.A. to slap tariffs on until Trump decided to play trade war commander-in-chief. It’s almost as if the act is the toy nobody wanted until now.
Meanwhile, the Court of International Trade has already delivered a blow to the tariff plan, but like any good soap opera, the drama continues with the Federal Circuit stepping into the spotlight next month. As the legal pendulum swings back and forth, Trump’s tariffs march on, paused only by the courts’ leisurely dance.
The inevitable appeals to the Supreme Court loom large, like storm clouds over a picnic, as the justices prepare to potentially entertain one or both cases. The toy companies are keen to use the rare “certiorari before judgment” card, a move typically reserved for genuine national crises—think Nixon’s tapes or Truman’s steel seizure. Clearly, in their eyes, plastic dinosaurs and counting blocks might just be the new steel.
Before 2019, this Hail Mary of legal maneuvers was dusted off maybe once every decade and a half. But in the past few years, the court has gone on a certiorari spree, indulging in it at least 19 times. Perhaps the justices have developed a taste for the dramatic? Or maybe the world’s just gotten a whole lot more entertaining—or absurd.
