Learning Resources v. Trump: Barrett, Gorsuch, and the Major Questions Doctrine
Few levers of economic power more directly affect consumers’ pocketbooks than executive imposition of sweeping tariffs. Specifically, Trump’s early-2025 reciprocal tariffs justified under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and levied first on China, Mexico, and Canada but later expanded to all trading partners have incurred costs on businesses worldwide, with “most of the cost being passed onto consumers.” Learning Resources v. Trump (2026) recently decided by the Supreme Court, settles this very issue: does IEEPA, in fact, authorize the president to impose tariffs?
The case originated in April 2025, when Learning Resources, Inc. and hand2mind, Inc. filed suit in the D.C. District Court alleging that the IEEPA tariffs put their businesses at existential risk. Within a month, they quickly obtained a preliminary injunction, but the injunction was immediately stayed pending appeal by the D.C. Circuit. In September, the Court granted certiorari before judgement and in February 2026 came to a 6-3 decision in the negative, that IEEPA “does not encompass the power to impose tariffs,” let alone peak rates of over 145% on Chinese goods.
However, inside this majority lies a significant tension. A three-justice block comprising Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett ruled in part using the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD), which holds that if the executive “seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear congressional authorization.” Gorsuch’s interpretation of the MQD, however, is one whose mandate is to “safeguard[] [Congress’s lawmaking] against executive encroachment.” Barrett’s concurrence, however, disagrees with this conception of the MQD. Specifically, such an expansive conception of the MQD’s purpose, she asserts, would constitute a “[s]trong-form substantive canon[]” that would “veer beyond interpretation and into policymaking.” Her interpretation instead represents a more reserved, hardline textualism regarding the MQD’s legal purpose, cautioning that “judges should hesitate to impose disciplining rules on Congress.” Though the MQD is often framed by the Court as a contextual interpretive rule, Gorsuch favors a more expansive purpose of the MQD, while Barrett favors a narrower scope.
In criteria, however, the split is reversed; Gorsuch’s criteria for applying the MQD to congressional delegations of power demands “clear congressional authorization” and to “speak precisely to any major power that it intends to give away.” Barrett broadens these criteria past precise delegations of power; in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) as in Learning Resources, she considers that “other, ‘less obvious’ clues can do the trick.” A criterion-scope split regarding the MQD, however, is in line with conservative-textual interpretations of the MQD: Gorsuch applies the MQD broadly but invokes it narrowly; Barrett applies the MQD narrowly but invokes it more broadly.
This Gorsuch-Barrett split regarding the MQD has important implications; in an era of escalating executive power, lawsuits aimed at executive overreach are increasing in frequency and alarm. As Barrett and Gorsuch have expressed the most recent Court position on the MQD vis-à-vis such executive power, these opinions may prove influential in future rulings on the executive, shaping the modern landscape of executive power in Trump’s second term. The intuition, for Barrett, is one of delegation: “if the Constitution permits Congress to give the Executive a particular power, who are we to get in the way?” Although limiting the president in the current case, this stance of delegatory non-interference potentially sets the stage for future expansions of presidential authority when Congress provides potentially ambiguous statutory grants of power; her less strict bar for invoking the MQD combined with this stance of non-interference will shape not only the future of the MQD, but power dynamics between congress and the executive as new struggles emerge.