Montana Court Declines to Keep Hearing Date on PI Motion in IEEPA Case After Transferring Case
The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana on April 28 denied a motion from four members of the Blackfeet Nation that sought to keep the established schedule on its motion for a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada after the Montana court transferred the matter to the Court of International Trade (Susan Webber v. United States, D. Mont. # 4:25-00026).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The Blackfeet Nation members sought to preserve the court's May 1 hearing on their preliminary injunction motion pending their appeal of the Montana court's decision to transfer, citing Federal Rule of Civl Procedure 62(d). This rule says that the court can "suspend, modify, restore, or grant an injunction" while an appeal is pending from an interlocutory order or final judgment that "grants, dissolves, or denies an injunction."
Judge Dana Christensen said that since the court neither granted nor denied the preliminary injunction motion, the Blackfeet Nation members' request "fails to satisfy the threshold requirement to the exception upon which they rely: an order granting, denying, or dissolving an injunction."
The Montana court agreed to transfer the case last week (see 2504250063). Christensen held that two cases establishing the trade court's exclusive jurisdiction to hear cases arising out of the Trading With the Enemy Act, IEEPA's predecessor, confirm CIT's exclusive jurisdiction to hear cases involving IEEPA, given that IEEPA has the "same operative language as that contained in the TWEA."