The U.S. Court of International Trade approved a petition from importers wishing to file a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over tariff refunds.

On Thursday, the New York-based court certified a group of plaintiffs allowing them to move forward with the joint suit. The complainants have said doing so as a class will simplify the process of pushing for paybacks on the Trump administration’s now-defunct International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs, which the Supreme Court ruled unlawful in February.

The class includes importers who paid into the duty scheme between Feb. 1, 2025 and Feb. 19, 2026—the day before the tariffs were struck down—and it excludes parties that filed their own separate lawsuits. According to the CIT, more than 4,000 lawsuits have been filed in relation to IEEPA refunds to date.

While Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has already processed around $130 billion of the approximately $166 billion in refunds due to importers through its Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system, which was built and deployed in the spring, CIT Judge Richard K. Eaton wrote in his slip order that “progress on liquidation and reliquidation, by importers’ voluntary use of CAPE, will one day come to an end.”

Some importers of record, he noted, haven’t utilized the system to request refunds, and that could be because they are “overwhelmingly small importers who, because of the cost or effort involved in filing a CAPE declaration, or because they are unaware of the program, will never take advantage of CAPE.”

The CAPE system also presents its own limitations, as it doesn’t accept certain categories of entries for processing, like finally liquidated entries from importers that haven’t brought their own lawsuits.

“Should further action not be taken, we are left with the prospect of the U.S. Department of the Treasury… retaining billions of dollars of unlawfully collected duties, and tens of thousands of importers of record being denied the liquidation or the reliquidation of their entries,” the judge wrote.

“Without these liquidations or reliquidations, these tens of thousands of importers will not receive the refunds they are owed,” he added. If CAPE were to cease functioning today for any reason, the Treasury would maintain custody of the remaining roughly $30 billion in unlawfully collected tariffs.

Judge Eaton wrote that a class action suit is one avenue importers can take to push forward the refund process. “Today, the court is certifying a class in the hope, and expectation, that this certification will lead to the liquidation or reliquidation of all of the entries on which the unlawful IEEPA duties were imposed, and the refund of those duties to the importers of record that paid them,” the order said.

While the news is no doubt a win for importers, it’s not quite an ace in the hole when it comes to prompting refunds, as it doesn’t immediately expand eligibility or guarantee direct payment.

“It does, however, create a potential path forward for non-litigants, toward a single order requiring refunds to be issued to importers that have not pursued individual lawsuits,” wrote James Kim, international trade partner at law firm ArentFox Schiff, in a post on LinkedIn.

According to the lawyer, counsel for the importers and the government are slated to join in a closed-door conference on Tuesday, after which they will have until Oct. 22 to agree on a proposed schedule, including a deadline for a government response to the complaint.