On October 8, 2026, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) certified a class action in Freestyle World, Inc. v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The class covers importers of record that paid duties under the challenged IEEPA tariff orders between February 1, 2025 and February 19, 2026, except any importer that filed its own lawsuit. Membership is automatic, with no opt-in and no opt-out. This is a certification order, though, not a refund order. The court has not yet granted the relief the class is asking for, and CAPE remains the working refund route for eligible entries today.
This post is written as of Friday, October 9, 2026, the day after the opinion issued. Everything below comes from the opinion itself unless another source is named.
What the court decided on October 8
The opinion is Slip Op. 26-123 in CIT Court No. 26-01088, by Judge Richard K. Eaton. Freestyle World filed its class action complaint on February 19, 2026, one day before the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that "IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs." (IEEPA is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.) Freestyle moved for certification on June 23, 2026, and the court heard argument on August 19.
The government opposed. It argued the motion came too late, that importers' claims are too varied to share a common answer, and that the case is really a claim for money dressed up as an injunction. The court rejected each argument and ordered:
- The motion is granted and the class is certified under USCIT Rule 23(b)(2).
- The class is defined as follows, verbatim: "All importers of record who paid duties imposed by the Challenged Tariff Orders between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, excluding any entity that has separately filed an action seeking to recover IEEPA duties payments." The order adds: "This class definition shall apply for all purposes, including settlement."
- Freestyle World is the class representative. The court also appointed class counsel.
- Next steps are scheduled. A closed conference with the parties is set for October 13, 2026. The parties must jointly submit a proposed scheduling order by October 22, 2026, including "the date by which the Government will answer or otherwise respond to the class action complaint."
That last item tells you where the case stands. As of October 9, the government has not yet answered the complaint.
What the class is asking for, and what it has not won yet
The class seeks one thing: "an injunction directing liquidation or reliquidation of all entries without regard to IEEPA duties." Liquidation is CBP's final calculation of the duties owed on an entry. Reliquidation is a recalculation after that. The opinion explains that a refund follows from reliquidation through the refund statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1505(b), which it quotes: CBP "shall . . . refund any excess moneys deposited, together with interest thereon, as determined on a liquidation or reliquidation."
The court has not issued that injunction. It says so directly: "there has been no merits determination in Freestyle." The Supreme Court settled the legal question, but that law "has yet to be applied to Freestyle's facts." The court writes that it certified the class "in the hope, and expectation" that it will lead to the liquidation or reliquidation of all entries on which IEEPA duties were imposed. That explains the court's purpose. It is not an order, and nobody should read it as a payout date.
A related appeal is also pending. On June 3, 2026, the government appealed to the Federal Circuit the part of the court's earlier V.O.S. Selections order directing liquidation or reliquidation of affected entries (Fed. Cir. No. 26-1895). The opinion says that decision "will be rendered in due course." It does not say whether the government will seek review of the certification itself, so we would not treat this order as the last word.
Am I in the class?
Probably, if you paid IEEPA duties in the window and never sued. Read the definition one piece at a time.
"Importers of record." The importer of record (IOR) is the party that made the entry and is liable for the duties. Your customs broker is not the IOR. If a foreign seller or forwarder acted as IOR on goods you bought delivered duty paid, the definition points at that party, not at you.
"Who paid duties imposed by the Challenged Tariff Orders." Footnote 1 explains that Freestyle defined these as the orders the Federal Circuit held unlawful in V.O.S. Selections. The Supreme Court affirmed that the "Trafficking and Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders" exceed IEEPA's authority. Your entry summaries (CBP Form 7501) show which lines carried IEEPA duties.
"Between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026." Footnote 2 says these are the dates Freestyle "believes are the first and last dates" IEEPA duties were collected before the suit was filed. Payments outside that window are not reached by the definition as written. Ask your own attorney what that means for them.
"Excluding any entity that has separately filed an action." If you are a plaintiff in one of the individual IEEPA refund suits, you are not in this class. You already have your own case.
The definition does not mention CAPE. Nothing in it excludes importers that filed CAPE declarations, and the opinion does not discuss how class membership and CAPE refunds interact for a single entry. Do not assume an answer either way.
The court puts the class at "some tens of thousands of importers," out of roughly 330,000 importers of record that paid IEEPA deposits.
Why the court said a class was needed
The opinion's reasoning matters to small importers, because the court is describing them.
CAPE has moved most of the money. CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) is the function CBP built into ACE, its Automated Commercial Environment, to liquidate or reliquidate IEEPA entries in bulk. According to the opinion, as of October 2, 2026, "approximately $136.6 billion in potential and certified refunds has been accepted for processing in CAPE." Of that, about $126 billion in duties plus interest had been refunded. CAPE had liquidated or reliquidated over 21.19 million entries. The court compares this against a March estimate of $166 billion in IEEPA duties on 53 million entries.
But some importers are not using it. The court writes that importers who have not used CAPE are believed to be "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."
And CAPE does not take every entry. CAPE "does not accept certain categories of entries for processing, including finally liquidated entries of non-plaintiff importers of record." An entry is "finally liquidated" once it "has been liquidated for more than 90 days," past CBP's window for voluntary reliquidation under 19 U.S.C. § 1501. Nor has CAPE accepted all entries liquidated more than 80 days ago from importers that have not sued.
The money left over is large. The court estimates that "were CAPE to cease to function today approximately $30 billion in unlawfully collected duties would remain on deposit in the Treasury."
Plaintiffs in the individual suits have a path non-plaintiffs do not. According to the October 8 opinion, "On October 6, 2026, Customs deployed CAPE Phase 3, which permits the plaintiffs in the more than 4,000 cases where the court's order has been entered to file a CAPE declaration." That is the order directing reliquidation of their finally liquidated entries. The opinion adds that, as of October 7, the court understood declarations covering 1.1 million entries and $500 million in claimed refunds had been accepted for processing in Phase 3. Our CAPE Phase 3 post covers who that phase is for.
The class is the court's answer to the gap. The government's position is that "without a court order directing it to do so, Customs does not have the authority to reliquidate finally liquidated entries." The court reasons that the injunction the class seeks "would provide the Government with the authority it claims is necessary."
Does this replace CAPE?
No. CAPE is running today. The class has a certification order and a scheduling conference.
If CAPE will accept an entry now, the class is not a reason to hold it back. An entry processed through CAPE does not depend on how the class case turns out.
The class matters most for the category CAPE turns away from non-plaintiffs: finally liquidated entries. For an importer that never sued, the opinion identifies no CAPE route for those. The class is a backstop, and its outcome is undecided.
Keep one more case separate. On August 6, 2026, the court heard a different class certification motion in V.O.S. Selections, where "the remedy sought would provide access to CAPE for more types of entries." The October 8 opinion does not decide that motion. For background, see our post on CIT orders on IEEPA refunds.
Should I file my own suit instead?
This is a real tradeoff, and it is a legal decision. We are a customs broker, not a law firm, and we do not advise on it. Here is what the opinion lays out, so you can bring the right questions to your own trade attorney.
Filing a suit takes you out of the class. The definition excludes "any entity that has separately filed an action seeking to recover IEEPA duties payments." There is no other way to leave. The court explains that a Rule 23(b)(2) class "does not permit a potential class member to either opt in or opt out," and that "membership in a class certified under Rule 23(b)(2) is mandatory and fixed."
Individual plaintiffs have an order in hand. As of October 7, there were more than 4,000 nearly identical cases involving around 7,000 plaintiffs. The order docketed in them directs reliquidation of entries "liquidated for more than 80 days," conditioned on counsel submitting IOR numbers to CBP and occurring "only following U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acceptance of Plaintiffs' CAPE declarations." It is a process with CBP review, not an automatic payment.
Class members wait on the class case. A class member files nothing, but its outcome and timing ride on Freestyle, which has not reached the merits. In the court's words, "the fortunes of the proposed class members will therefore rise or fall with those of Freestyle itself."
Questions for your attorney: How much IEEPA duty sits on my finally liquidated entries? What would a separate suit cost against that amount, and what timing should I expect either way? Bring an entry list with liquidation dates.
What to do this week
None of this requires waiting on the court.
- Pull every IEEPA entry from ACE. For each one, get the entry number, entry date, liquidation status and date, and the IEEPA duty amount. Our IEEPA refund deadline tracker walks through building that inventory.
- Sort entries into three groups.
- Unliquidated, or liquidated within the window CAPE accepts: file a CAPE declaration now, if the entry type qualifies.
- Liquidated and past CAPE's window, but still inside the protest window: make a protest decision with counsel. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1514(a), a liquidation is "final and conclusive upon all persons" unless a protest is filed or a CIT action is started on time. Under § 1514(c)(3), a protest is due "within 180 days after but not before" liquidation. Do not let these windows lapse while waiting to see what the class achieves. The class has not won anything yet.
- Finally liquidated and past the protest window: this is the group the class most directly addresses. Keep it listed and documented.
- Keep your refund setup current. The opinion quotes a CBP declaration that refunds are done "only electronically in ACE." If your ACH refund enrollment is missing or stale, fix it now.
- Keep your IOR record current. Make sure your CBP Form 5106 record has a working contact and address. The opinion does not say how, or whether, class members will be contacted.
- Keep your entry records. The court describes the refund math as running each importer's Form 7501 against the law by computer. Keep your 7501s, payment records and liquidation notices so you can check any number CBP produces.
- Watch October 22. The joint scheduling order due that day should show when the government must respond to the complaint.
No. The court certified the class under USCIT Rule 23(b)(2), which "does not permit a potential class member to either opt in or opt out." If you meet the definition (an importer of record that paid duties under the challenged orders between February 1, 2025 and February 19, 2026, with no separate suit), you are in it.
Does class certification mean I will get a refund?
Not by itself. As of October 9, 2026, the court has certified the class but has not ruled on the merits or granted the injunction the class seeks. The government has not yet answered the complaint, and a proposed scheduling order is due October 22. Nobody can promise an outcome from this order.
I have already filed CAPE declarations. Am I still in the class?
The class definition excludes only entities that "separately filed an action" to recover IEEPA duties. It does not mention CAPE. The opinion does not address how CAPE refunds and class membership interact for a given entry, so ask your attorney about your situation. Meanwhile, keep filing CAPE declarations for eligible entries.
Should I hold my entries out of CAPE and wait for the class?
We would not. CAPE is processing refunds now, and the class has not won relief. The class matters most for finally liquidated entries, which CAPE does not accept from importers that have not sued. Entries CAPE will take today have a working route today.
How we help
We work with importers in four modes. For the class action and your IEEPA entries, here is what each one covers:
- Consult. We sort your IEEPA entries by route (CAPE now, protest window, or finally liquidated) using your ACE data, and we flag every date that is close.
- Comply. We build the entry inventory with liquidation dates and duty amounts, and we check your ACH refund setup and IOR record. Your attorney, or whoever files, starts from a clean list.
- Clear. We keep your current entries moving while the refund work runs, with full brokerage at $100–$250 per entry.
- Automate. If your team wants to handle its own routine filings and see its own liquidation dates in ACE, self-filing runs $30 per entry.
We don't file lawsuits, give legal advice, or speak for the class. We also can't predict what the court will order or what CBP will pay on any entry. What we can do is help make sure none of your entries misses a CAPE or protest window while the case plays out. Start with our IEEPA and CAPE refund review, or talk to our team.
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