So here's what happens when you lose one legal battle over tariffs: you find another law to use. And when you do that, you get sued again.

A group of 24 states has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging the brand new 10% global tariff that was slapped on imports using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. They filed the case at the Court of International Trade in New York on Thursday, and they're making a pretty straightforward argument: President Donald Trump is using a 50-year-old law for something it wasn't designed to do.

The coalition includes 22 states with Democratic attorneys general, plus Pennsylvania and Kentucky—which have Democratic governors but Republican attorneys general. So it's mostly blue states, but with a couple of interesting political hybrids thrown in. The White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Now, about that 1974 law. The states argue that Section 122 was created to let presidents impose limited tariffs to fix balance-of-payment deficits. But here's the catch: that only makes sense in a fixed-rate exchange system, like when the U.S. was on the gold standard. We abandoned that system fifty years ago under President Richard Nixon. In today's floating exchange rate world, the lawsuit says, large balance-of-payment deficits don't stick around because currency values adjust automatically.

So the states are basically saying: "This law is for a problem we don't have anymore, using a system we don't use anymore." They want the court to block the new tariffs and order refunds for any money already collected. They're also reminding everyone that, constitutionally, the power to impose tariffs belongs to Congress.

This lawsuit didn't come out of nowhere. Back in February, the Supreme Court struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). So what did he do? He immediately announced a 10% global tariff under Section 122, then raised it to 15% the next day, and signed an executive order to make it official.

Here's how Section 122 works: it lets the president impose tariffs of up to 15% on all countries for 150 days. If he wants to keep them longer, he needs Congress to say yes. The funny thing is, since this law was created in 1974, nobody has ever actually used it to impose tariffs. Until now.

Meanwhile, there's another tariff headache brewing. The U.S. Court of International Trade has already ordered the government to potentially refund billions of dollars in tariffs to importers, saying those tariffs were collected illegally. A report from the Cato Institute points out that the $175 billion in tariff revenue sitting in the U.S. Treasury is earning interest. If refunds to importers get delayed, taxpayers could be on the hook for about $700 million per month in costs.

And just to keep things interesting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the global tariff—currently at 10%—will jump to 15% "sometime this week." But he also thinks that by August, the tariff rates will go back to where they started. So we might have a temporary tariff that's already being challenged in court, while the government figures out what to do with billions in tariff money that might need to be returned.

It's a classic Washington situation: use one law, get sued, use another law, get sued again. And somewhere in the middle, businesses are trying to figure out what to pay and when.