On October 8, 2026, Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) certified a class of importers seeking refunds of the IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February. The class covers importers who paid IEEPA duties but have not filed their own refund lawsuits at the trade court.1 If that describes your business, you just became part of a group lawsuit, whether you knew about it or not.
That sounds like the refund problem is solved. It is not. The ruling is a real win for smaller importers who never hired trade counsel, but it does not put money in your account this quarter, it does not replace the refund claims you can file today, and it will almost certainly be appealed. Here is what actually changed and what to do about it this month.
What the Court Decided on October 8
A class action lets one lawsuit stand in for a large group of people with the same claim. Judge Eaton certified this one under Rule 23(b)(2) of the court's rules, the type used when the court orders the government to do something for everyone in the group, and appointed Barnes, Richardson & Colburn and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein as class counsel.3
The government fought certification and lost. The court rejected its procedural and substantive objections, including the argument that the request was filed too late.2 The government's core position has been that importers who never filed their own case should not get refunds on entries that are already finally liquidated.
Judge Eaton was clear about the goal. He wrote that he hopes the certification "will lead to the liquidation or reliquidation of all of the entries on which the unlawful IEEPA duties were imposed."1 In plain terms: every IEEPA dollar, on every entry, for every importer.
Why This Matters If You Are a Smaller Importer
To see why this ruling matters, you need to know where the refund system has gaps.
CBP built its refund system, called CAPE, in phases. Phase 1 launched on April 20, 2026 and covers entries that are still unliquidated or were liquidated within the last 80 days.4 (Liquidation is CBP's final calculation of the duty owed on an entry, which usually happens about 314 days after the goods arrive.) Phase 3, scheduled to open October 6, 2026, handles entries that are already finally liquidated, but only for plaintiffs in pending CIT cases where the court has ordered reliquidation.5
That left a hole. If your early 2025 entries liquidated and the protest window closed, and you never filed a lawsuit, CAPE had no lane for you. Large importers with trade lawyers sued early and got into Phase 3. A DTC brand importing a few containers a month from Shenzhen usually did not.
The class is meant to cover exactly those importers. And the numbers involved are large. As of October 2, CBP had accepted about $136.6 billion in potential and certified refunds in CAPE, and about $126 billion in duties and interest had been sent to the Treasury for payment.1 Judge Eaton estimated that roughly $30 billion could stay with the government if CAPE stopped working.1 A meaningful share of that money belongs to importers who were never going to sue on their own.
What the Ruling Does Not Do
Here is our take: treat the class as a safety net, not a plan. Three reasons.
It pays nobody yet. Certifying a class decides who is covered by the lawsuit. It does not order CBP to send checks tomorrow. The court still has to issue relief for the class, and CBP still has to process it.
An appeal is likely. The government already appealed the CIT's earlier refund order to the Federal Circuit in June.6 Expect the same fight here, which could add many months.
It does not replace CAPE. If you have entries that qualify for CAPE today, the class gives you no reason to wait. CAPE claims are being paid now. Class relief is a future maybe.
What to Do Before Year-End
Whether you import one container a quarter or fifty a month, the steps are the same.
1. Get a full list of your IEEPA entries
Pull an entry-level report from ACE (CBP's Automated Commercial Environment) or ask your customs broker for it. You need every entry since February 2025 with IEEPA duties, the amount paid, and the liquidation status and date of each one. If you do not have an ACE portal account, this is the moment to set one up.
2. File CAPE claims on everything that qualifies now
Unliquidated entries and entries liquidated in the last 80 days go through CAPE Phase 1.4 That 80-day window keeps moving, so entries that qualify this week may not qualify next month. Do not let the class certification slow this down.
3. Watch your protest deadlines
For liquidated entries, you can still file a protest within 180 days of liquidation.7 A protest keeps your claim alive on your own terms, without depending on how the class case ends. Entries that arrived in mid to late 2025 are liquidating right now, so check these dates every few weeks.
4. Decide whether the class is enough for you
The class covers importers who have not filed their own CIT cases.3 For most small and mid-sized importers, staying in the class is the sensible, low-cost default. If you have a large amount stuck on finally liquidated entries, talk to trade counsel about whether a separate suit gets you paid faster. That is a legal call, not a logistics one, but you should make it on purpose rather than by default.
5. Check your ACH refund setup
Since February 6, 2026, CBP issues refunds only electronically, and it holds refunds until valid ACH refund details are on file in the ACE portal. ACH set up only for paying duties does not count. CBP has also said that no interest accrues on a certified refund it cannot deliver because the importer never provided banking information.8 This is a short fix in the ACE portal under the ACH Refund Authorization tab, so do it now.
6. Do not price your 2027 products around the refund
It is tempting to treat a pending refund as cash on hand when planning landed costs for next year. Don't. Book what CAPE has accepted. Treat anything that depends on the class case as upside. Your landed cost model should reflect the duties you pay today, not the ones you might get back in 2027.
The Bigger Picture for Importers
This is the third major court event in the IEEPA refund story this year, after the Supreme Court decision in February and the CIT's refund orders that followed. Each one has expanded who can get money back. None of them has made the process automatic.
The pattern for importers is clear. The businesses that get paid first are the ones with clean entry data, a broker who tracks liquidation dates, and someone who owns the refund process internally. The ones that wait for the courts to finish will probably get paid too, eventually, but "eventually" in trade litigation can mean years.
Tariff policy is not slowing down, either. New duties under other legal authorities keep arriving, which means the same habits that win you an IEEPA refund (clean data, tracked deadlines, a broker who flags problems early) will protect you on the next round too. We covered how the replacement tariffs worked in our post on the Section 122 surcharge.
If you are not sure which of your entries qualify for CAPE, which ones are covered by the class, or which protest deadlines are coming up, talk to Cubic. Our customs brokerage team can pull your IEEPA entry history, flag what to file now, and keep your future ocean freight entries clean so the next refund fight is easier to win.
Sources
- Trade Court Certifies Class of Importers Seeking Tariff Refunds - Bloomberg Law
- Trade Court Sides With Importers Seeking Class-Action Status for Tariff Refund Push - Sourcing Journal
- CIT Certifies IEEPA Tariff Refund Class - Thompson Hine SmarTrade
- CAPE Has Arrived: Navigating the Next Phase of IEEPA Duty Refunds - Holland & Knight
- IEEPA Tariff Refund Update: CAPE Phase III Set for October 6 - Cherry Bekaert
- Tariff Refund Battle Continues: Government Appeals Order - Morgan Lewis
- IEEPA Frequently Asked Questions - U.S. Customs and Border Protection
- CAPE Opens in ACE: What Importers Need to Know About IEEPA Refund Processing - BDO
