Which states are suing Trump over tariffs?

Non-advice notice: this tracker is for litigation-record verification only. It is not legal advice, customs advice, or a substitute for checking the docket, complaint caption, plaintiff roster, and operative order before relying on any state list.

• Legal-background reviewer: Elena Park, J.D.
• Last verified: Aug. 4, 2026.
• Source rule for publication: complaint PDFs and slip opinions control. Secondary coverage is useful for routing and context, but the linked PDFs should be opened directly before any quotation, roster count, standing description, or remedy statement is reused.

The answer to “states suing Trump over tariffs list” is not one list. By Aug. 4, 2026, the record showed four separate state actions across three tariff authorities: California’s standalone April 2025 suit; a 12-state IEEPA coalition filed one week later; a 24-state Section 122 action filed in March 2026; and a 25-state Section 301 forced-labor action filed on Aug. 3, 2026.

The per-round roster

Roster mechanics that matter for citations

Only the original dozen states appear in every multistate coalition round: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. They made up the Apr. 23, 2025 IEEPA coalition, and they remain present in the later Section 122 and Section 301 rosters. [2][5][8]

California is easy to misfile because it is both first and later. It filed the first state tariff suit alone on Apr. 16, 2025, then appears in the 24-state Section 122 roster and the 25-state Section 301 roster. It was not one of the Apr. 23, 2025 IEEPA coalition plaintiffs. [1][2][5][8]

Hawaii is the late entrant on the materials reviewed here. It does not appear in the April 2025 IEEPA roster or the March 2026 Section 122 roster; it appears in the Aug. 3, 2026 Section 301 complaint, bringing that roster to 25 states. [2][5][8]

Lead-plaintiff shorthand should be handled with care. New York’s attorney general framed the April 2025 IEEPA litigation as an AG James-led challenge with 11 other attorneys general, while Oregon’s attorney general publicly framed the March 2026 Section 122 action as a Rayfield-led multistate suit. The roster is the safer citation object than the press-label lead description. [2][9]

There is also a political metadata point, but it should not do more work than the records allow. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s office said no Republican-led state joined the March 2026 multistate action. That observation helps explain the coalition’s public framing; it does not merge the four cases or change any party roster. [9]

California’s Apr. 16 suit is separate from the coalition litigation

California’s standalone filing matters because it is the first state action in this sequence and because it is not the same case as the 12-state IEEPA complaint filed the following week. California’s governor and attorney general announced the suit on Apr. 16, 2025, describing it as a lawsuit to end President Trump’s tariffs and placing it in the Northern District of California. [1]

For roster work, that is enough to keep the file clean: California was the sole state in the first action; it later joined the Section 122 and Section 301 coalitions; it should not be inserted retroactively into the original IEEPA coalition list.

The IEEPA coalition: win, termination, and refund posture

The Apr. 23, 2025 IEEPA coalition is the round most likely to produce an overbroad “states won” citation because it did produce a full appellate sequence favorable to the challengers. The New York attorney general’s Aug. 29, 2025 release identified the 12-state roster and reported that the Federal Circuit affirmed the CIT’s ruling against the tariffs. The Supreme Court then affirmed 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump on Feb. 20, 2026. [2][3]

After the Supreme Court decision, the administration terminated IEEPA-based tariffs through EO 14389 on Feb. 24, 2026. White & Case described the post-termination posture as leaving refund administration to proceed after remand, rather than treating the Supreme Court ruling itself as a self-executing refund order for every affected importer. [4]

For the refund side of that IEEPA track, see The Amazon Trump tariff refund lawsuit, explained, Can the government take back Amazon’s $600M tariff refund?, and the tariff-refund eligibility record to trace importer eligibility, refund timing, and government recoupment arguments.

The Section 122 ruling is not a clean 24-state remedy

The March 2026 Section 122 complaint expanded the multistate roster to 24 states by adding California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania to the original dozen. The complaint belongs in the Court of International Trade record, not in the IEEPA file. [5]

The remedy posture is the important part. In Slip Op. 26-47, the CIT ruled against the Section 122 tariffs, but it also dismissed all non-importer state claims for lack of standing. The relief was limited to three importer plaintiffs: State of Washington, Burlap and Barrel, Inc., and Basic Fun, Inc. A sentence saying “24 states won” is therefore not precise enough for a brief, client alert, or corrected news copy. [6]

Skadden’s discussion of the ruling likewise treated the case as a trade-court invalidation of Section 122 tariffs with a narrowed standing and remedy posture, and noted the continued appellate posture. The tariffs later expired on July 24, 2026; that expiration does not retroactively broaden the class of plaintiffs that received relief in Slip Op. 26-47. [7]

For broader statutory layering—IEEPA, Section 122, Section 232, Section 301, and USMCA-adjacent risk—the companion record is USMCA non-renewal and the reconfigured tariff regime. The point for this tracker is narrower: Section 122 has its own plaintiff roster, standing ruling, and remedy limits.

The Aug. 3 Section 301 action is a new pending complaint

The newest filing is the least developed record. The Aug. 3, 2026 Section 301 complaint lists 25 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Hawaii is the new roster item compared with the March 2026 Section 122 complaint. [8]

The complaint’s safer quantitative anchor is its own allegation that the challenged measures affect 99.4% of U.S. imports. Early coverage did not settle a single count of affected trading partners: AP coverage distributed through Fox5 referred to 59 countries plus the European Union; CNBC referred to 60 countries; Spectrum described more than 80 countries. Those are secondary counts, not a reason to rewrite the complaint’s allegation. [8][10][11][12]

As of Aug. 4, 2026, this action should be cited as newly filed and pending. Do not import the IEEPA merits result or the Section 122 standing ruling into the Section 301 case unless a later docket entry does that work.

Status table, last verified Aug. 4, 2026

Anyone asking which states are suing Trump over tariffs has to specify the tariff authority and the filing round. The answer changes by statute, date, court, plaintiff roster, standing ruling, and remedy. The records above are close enough in public shorthand to be confused, but they are not the same case.

References

1. Governor Newsom files lawsuit to end President Trump’s tariffs, Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, Apr. 16, 2025.
2. Attorney General James Wins Latest Challenge to Trump Administration’s Tariffs, New York State Attorney General, Aug. 29, 2025.
3. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287, Supreme Court of the United States, Feb. 20, 2026.
4. United States Terminates IEEPA-Based Tariffs Following Supreme Court Decision, White & Case.
5. State of Oregon et al. v. Donald J. Trump et al. complaint, 2026, New York State Attorney General.
6. State of Oregon v. United States, Slip Op. 26-47, U.S. Court of International Trade, May 7, 2026.
7. US Trade Court Strikes Down Section 122 Tariffs, Skadden, May 2026.
8. 25-state Section 301 complaint, Wisconsin Department of Justice, Aug. 3, 2026.
9. AG Rayfield Leads Multistate Lawsuit Against Trump Over New Illegal Tariffs, Oregon Department of Justice.
10. 25 states sue over Trump administration’s latest tariffs, citing Supreme Court ruling, AP via Fox5, Aug. 3, 2026.
11. Trump tariffs: 25 states lawsuit Supreme Court, CNBC, Aug. 3, 2026.
12. States sue Trump over Section 301 tariffs, Spectrum News, Aug. 3, 2026.