WASHINGTON — The Liberty Justice Center (LJC), the nonprofit public-interest law firm that helped argue the successful Supreme Court challenge to President Donald Trump's emergency-powers tariffs, announced a new initiative on Monday, November 2, called Operation Refund Rescue. The program will represent qualifying small businesses free of charge in federal court so they can recover tariff payments that the Supreme Court has already ruled were unlawfully collected.

Source: Liberty Justice Center

Operation Refund Rescue is part of LJC's Project TERRA (Tariff Equity and Refund Resource for America). For each business it accepts, LJC says it will file an individual action in the U.S. Court of International Trade, pursue a court order allowing the business's tariff entries to be considered for reliquidation and refunds, and give guidance on the refund process that follows. LJC will cover all court filing fees and litigation expenses for accepted clients.

Why a court order is needed at all

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been paying refunds through an electronic system it built called CAPE, and billions of dollars have already gone back to importers. But importers whose entries have reached what customs law calls final liquidation cannot access a CAPE refund without first obtaining an individual court order. That has created what LJC calls a two-tiered refund system: businesses big enough to hire attorneys and obtain court orders can move forward, while smaller importers — for whom the cost of a federal lawsuit can consume a substantial portion of the refund itself — are left waiting while the government continues to challenge broader refund relief.

Bloomberg Tax reported the same day that the government has returned most of the roughly $166 billion it collected under the emergency tariffs, but that roughly $30 billion remains outstanding, including many imports for which the government says importers must file lawsuits to get their money back. LJC announced the free-representation offer on Monday, saying it would initially take on 100 small businesses.

Source: Bloomberg Tax

The road here: the ruling, then a refund fight

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — the so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs — in the challenge LJC helped argue, V.O.S. Selections. The ruling made the money refundable in principle, but the months since have turned into a second fight over how refunds actually reach businesses: importers have protested and pressed in court for a general refund process open to everyone, a stage of this story Awaaz Punjab reported in October. Operation Refund Rescue is the next step in that same fight — this time aimed at the small businesses the general process has not reached.

"We went all the way to the Supreme Court to prove these tariffs were unlawful. Yet eight months later, American businesses are still being forced to hire lawyers and file federal lawsuits just to recover their own money," said Sara Albrecht, Chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center. "The government lost this case. It should be returning the money it unlawfully collected, not continuing to fight relief that would make refunds available to everyone. Justice should not depend on whether you can afford another lawsuit."

Who can apply — and what is not covered

The program is open to U.S. businesses that directly paid IEEPA tariffs, whose entries include one or more that reached final liquidation (the obstacle blocking a CAPE refund), that have not already filed their own lawsuit in the Court of International Trade over the same payments, and that were the importer of record for the affected entries and can provide documentation identifying themselves and their estimated refund amounts. Businesses apply by completing a confidential client intake questionnaire on the Project TERRA website; there is no charge to apply, but LJC says submitting the questionnaire does not create an attorney-client relationship or guarantee acceptance, and the program's initial capacity is 100 filings.

Source: Project TERRA — Operation Refund Rescue

The limits are narrow and stated plainly: the program covers only the specific court proceedings needed to unlock the refund route. It does not provide general customs counseling, ongoing management of a business's administrative refund, or representation in unrelated trade matters.

LJC is also publicly calling on the private trade bar to step forward. "The trade bar has benefited from substantial litigation generated by these unlawful tariffs, yet our requests for pro bono assistance for smaller businesses have largely gone unanswered," Albrecht said. "We welcome attorneys and firms willing to dedicate some of these resources to helping small importers recover their money."

Why this matters to small importers and freight families

The money at stake is working capital. LJC's own account of the tariff fight says small businesses were forced, with little warning, to effectively lend much of their working capital to the federal government, without the supply-chain flexibility or financial cushion available to larger companies. That hits exactly the kind of family-run import, wholesale and trucking-linked businesses common in Punjabi diaspora hubs from California's Central Valley to New Jersey and New York: firms that paid the duties at the border on goods, parts and inventory, and have now waited eight months to get their own money back. Alongside the 100 individual cases, LJC says it continues to pursue nationwide relief — including class-style certification asking the court to require CBP to open the same refund process to every eligible importer regardless of liquidation status — which would remove the need for individual lawsuits altogether.

What happens next

Intake is open now, and the first accepted businesses will have their cases filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade. A court order in a business's favour would then allow its finally liquidated entries to be considered for reliquidation and processed for refunds through CBP. The broader nationwide-relief litigation continues in parallel, and the tariff fight itself is not over: LJC's November litigation report says attention has already shifted to the replacement tariffs the administration imposed under other statutes after the IEEPA ruling. "Operation Refund Rescue should not have to exist," Albrecht added. "The government should be returning this money to every affected American importer. Until that happens, we will keep fighting to make sure small businesses are not left behind."