On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — known as the IEEPA — were illegal. The decision was momentous. But for millions of American consumers who had already paid inflated shipping costs and tariff-related surcharges to UPS, the ruling arrived without a refund check. Within hours of the decision being published, a class action lawsuit landed in federal court in Atlanta, directly targeting one of the most powerful logistics companies in the world.

The complaint, filed by South Carolina resident Hali Anastopoulo on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers nationwide, makes a pointed accusation: UPS charged customers fees derived from tariffs that were never legally authorized — and now refuses to return the money.

The Tariff Regime That Wasn’t Legal

For months leading up to the Supreme Court ruling, importers across the United States paid tariffs to U.S. Customs that had been levied under the IEEPA. The law, historically used for sanctions and financial restrictions, was invoked by the Trump administration to justify sweeping tariffs on goods from dozens of countries. The legal basis was contested from the start, but the tariffs were enforced — and the money flowed.

According to the complaint, tariff collections in January 2026 alone reached $30 billion. Year-to-date, by the time the Supreme Court ruled, the government had collected $124 billion in tariff revenue — a staggering 304% increase over the same period in 2025. These were not funds collected through negotiated trade agreements or congressional authorization. They were collected under an executive order that the nation’s highest court ultimately declared to have no legal foundation.

The Court’s ruling, however, came with a significant gap: it provided no guidance on how or whether refunds should be issued. The government has not initiated any automatic reimbursement process. Importers who bore the economic burden of the tariffs, and consumers who absorbed the costs downstream through elevated shipping fees and surcharges, remain without compensation.

What UPS Is Accused of Doing

The lawsuit’s central argument is straightforward but serious. UPS, as a shipping and customs clearance provider, entered into contracts with customers — contracts that the complaint says authorized UPS to collect and pass through only lawful duties, taxes, and governmental charges. Those contracts, the lawsuit argues, explicitly did not authorize UPS to charge, collect, or retain unlawful or unauthorized tariffs.

Yet UPS did exactly that, the complaint alleges. The company imposed additional fees, surcharges, and tariff-related charges on customers during the period when the IEEPA tariffs were in effect. Now that those tariffs have been declared illegal, UPS has neither refunded those charges nor indicated any intention to do so.

The lawsuit asserts two legal causes of action. The first is breach of contract: by collecting and retaining tariff-related charges that were never legally owed, and by failing to refund those charges after the Supreme Court’s ruling, UPS is alleged to have broken the express terms of its own shipping agreements, as well as the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The second cause of action is unjust enrichment: UPS knowingly received financial benefits it was not legally entitled to, and equity demands those funds be returned.

The People Left Without Answers

Anastopoulo’s complaint is structured as a nationwide class action under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The proposed class is broad: all individuals residing in the United States who paid unlawful tariffs to UPS under the IEEPA. A South Carolina subclass mirrors the nationwide definition but is limited to that state’s residents.

Given the scale of UPS’s operations and the duration of the IEEPA tariff regime, the number of potential class members could be enormous. UPS handles millions of shipments per day. Tariff-related surcharges were applied systematically, not on a case-by-case basis. The complaint notes that adequate notice can be given to class members directly using information maintained in UPS’s own records — a recognition that the company’s data infrastructure makes identification of affected customers feasible.

For most individual consumers, the tariff-related charges embedded in their shipping costs were modest in isolation. But the class action mechanism exists precisely for this situation: when a corporation collects small amounts from millions of people, the aggregate harm is massive even if no single victim has enough at stake to justify individual litigation.

A Ruling Without a Remedy

The lawsuit exposes a critical gap in the Supreme Court’s decision: declaring a law unconstitutional does not automatically undo the financial harm it caused. The government collected $124 billion under illegal authority. Companies like UPS passed portions of that cost on to customers through surcharges. The Court’s ruling invalidated the tariffs going forward — but left the question of restitution entirely open.

This is not the first time the legal system has grappled with the gap between a court ruling and actual consumer relief. In antitrust cases, securities fraud cases, and consumer protection disputes, courts have repeatedly found that corporations can be required to disgorge profits obtained through unlawful conduct even after the underlying violation has been formally ended. The UPS complaint seeks exactly that: disgorgement of revenues wrongfully retained, restitution to affected consumers, and injunctive relief to prevent further unlawful collection.

The Broader Pattern of Corporate Tariff Opportunism

The UPS lawsuit did not emerge in a vacuum. Across the economy, large corporations with customs and freight operations benefited from the tariff environment in ways that went beyond mere pass-through of government charges. Tariff surcharges became a standard line item in shipping invoices. Brokerage fees tied to customs clearance — also covered in the UPS complaint — were layered on top of the tariff charges themselves. When tariffs rise, so do the ancillary fees that logistics companies collect for navigating them.

The complaint specifically calls out not just the tariff-related surcharges themselves, but also the brokerage and administrative fees that UPS collected in connection with those unlawful tariffs. This is significant: even if UPS argued that it simply passed through government tariffs without markup, the brokerage fees it charged for facilitating that pass-through were also derived from the unlawful tariff regime — and, the complaint argues, equally without legal justification.

The Customs Clearance Business

UPS operates one of the most extensive customs clearance operations in the world. When a package crosses an international border, UPS does not merely deliver it — the company handles the customs documentation, duty calculations, and government filings that govern what enters the country and at what cost. For this service, UPS charges brokerage fees. Those fees are calibrated to the complexity of the shipment, and complexity increases when tariff rates are high and rules are in flux.

During the IEEPA tariff period, this business was exceptionally lucrative. Tariff rates were elevated, the rules were constantly changing, and importers depended on companies like UPS to navigate the regulatory environment. Every piece of that business was built on a tariff regime that the Supreme Court has now said was never legally authorized in the first place.

What Comes Next

The case is at its earliest stage. UPS has not yet responded to the complaint, and no hearing has been scheduled. The court will need to address class certification — whether the proposed class meets the legal requirements of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy — before the case can proceed on a class-wide basis.

UPS, for its part, has the resources and legal firepower to mount a substantial defense. The company could argue that its tariff-related charges were collected in good faith reliance on the then-existing legal framework, that its contracts anticipated and authorized the collection of government-mandated fees regardless of their ultimate legality, and that class-wide damages are too speculative or individualized to permit class certification.

But the legal landscape tilts in one uncomfortable direction for UPS: its own contracts, as quoted in the complaint, appear to limit the company to collecting only lawful charges. That word — lawful — may prove decisive. If UPS’s own terms of service prohibited collecting unlawful tariffs, the company’s defense becomes considerably more difficult.

A Case That Could Define Corporate Accountability in the Tariff Era

The Anastopoulo v. UPS complaint arrives at a moment when the legal and economic fallout from the IEEPA tariff regime is only beginning to be sorted out. It is almost certainly not the last such lawsuit. Other carriers, importers, and customs brokers who collected tariff-related charges during the same period face the same legal exposure. The question of who bears the cost of an illegal government policy — the government, the corporations that collected on its behalf, or the consumers who ultimately paid — will be litigated across multiple courts in the months and years ahead.

What the UPS lawsuit makes clear is that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not end the controversy. It began it. The tariffs are gone. The money collected under them is not. And for millions of Americans who shipped goods through UPS during the IEEPA era, the outcome of this case may determine whether they ever see any of it returned.

This report is based on the complaint filed in Anastopoulo v. United Parcel Service Inc., Case No. 1:26-cv-01005-VMC (N.D. Ga. Feb. 20, 2026). All factual allegations reflect the contents of the complaint and represent claims that have not been adjudicated. UPS has not yet filed a response. This article does not constitute legal advice.