A Pensacola entrepreneur whose company has spent years absorbing escalating import tariffs is watching closely after the U.S. Supreme Court sharply questioned the legal basis for the most recent round of those duties last week. The case before the Court is not hers, but the outcome could determine the fate of her own lawsuit — and the future of her business.
Emily Ley, founder of Simplified, a planner and paper‑goods company with nine employees, sued the federal government in April over a 2025 round of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. The law allows presidents to regulate certain cross‑border transactions during national emergencies. Her complaint contends the administration exceeded this authority, however, by imposing new tariffs without congressional involvement.
Her attorneys later filed a friend‑of‑the‑court brief in a separate case that reached the Supreme Court first. That case, argued Nov. 5, raises the same core question: whether IEEPA’s description of “regulating” importation allows a president to unilaterally impose global tariffs.
The hearing produced a notable twist. Several conservative justices, typically sympathetic to executive flexibility in national‑security matters, pressed the administration’s lawyers on whether IEEPA’s reference to “regulating” importation can be stretched to authorize tariffs — a tool that ordinarily requires congressional action. Their questioning introduced new uncertainty about the future of the 2025 tariff program.
For Ley, the stakes are immediate. She manufactures her products overseas after domestic printing proved prohibitively expensive. The tariffs, she said in April, have cost her more than a million dollars in recent years and threatened the company’s ability to retain staff and keep prices stable.
Ley has stressed that her concerns are not partisan but structural — a question of how far emergency statutes reach and who bears the cost when they are stretched.
The Trump administration has justified the latest tariff actions as tools to address declared emergencies — including drug trafficking and persistent non‑reciprocal trade practices — arguing that emergency powers can be used to regulate cross‑border economic activity when urgent threats arise. Ley said she is sympathetic to those underlying concerns but believes small businesses are being unfairly burdened.
“Punishing American businesses and American consumers, there’s a big disconnect for me there,” she said earlier this year. She added that she feels “a little bit like we’re being used like a cheap checkerboard game in the international trade war.”
She noted earlier this year that most U.S. importers are small firms and that many domestic manufacturers rely on imported inputs, making tariffs a cost that travels through entire supply chains.
A federal appeals court ruled in August that IEEPA does not authorize the contested tariff programs but left them in place while the government appealed, setting up the Supreme Court’s review. The justices are expected to issue a decision in the coming months.
"Whatever happens in this case could set precedent for ours," Ley said this week.
