By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue its next decisions on Jan. 14 as several major cases remain pending including the legality of President Donald Trump’s massive global tariffs.
The Court indicated on its website on Friday that it may release decisions in argued cases when the judges take the bench during a hearing scheduled for next Wednesday. The court does not announce in advance which cases will be decided.
The judges issued one decision on Friday in a criminal case.
The challenge to Trump’s tariffs marks a major test of presidential powers as well as the court’s willingness to check some of the Republican president’s far-reaching assertions of authority since he returned to office in January 2025. The outcome will also affect the global economy.
During arguments in the case heard by the court on November 5, conservative and liberal justices appeared to cast doubt on the legality of the tariffs, which Trump imposed by invoking a 1977 law intended for use during national emergencies. The Trump administration is appealing lower court rulings that overstepped its authority.
Trump said the tariffs made the United States stronger financially. In a social media post on January 2, Trump said a Supreme Court ruling against the tariffs would be a “terrible blow” to the United States.
Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on goods imported by individual countries – almost every foreign trading partner – to address what he called a national emergency related to US trade deficits. He invoked the same law to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, citing the trafficking of the commonly abused painkiller fentanyl and illicit drugs to the United States as a national emergency.
The challenges to the tariffs in the Supreme Court cases were brought by businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 US states, most of them led by Democrats.
Other important cases are also awaiting decisions on the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, including a challenge to a key section of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal law enacted by Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
Another involves a challenge on free speech grounds to a Colorado law that prohibits psychotherapists from conducting “conversion therapy” that aims to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBT minors.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung and John Kruzel in Washington; Additional reporting by David Lawder and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)