The fight over who keeps the money from the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February is moving from press releases to a courtroom calendar. On September 18, CFO Dive reported that thirteen corporate defendants, among them Amazon, Costco Wholesale, Walmart and three Shein entities, have filed a joint opposition with the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation asking it to reject a bid to fold at least 25 consumer refund suits into a single case in Chicago. Six days later, on September 24, the same panel sits in Chicago to hear oral argument on a narrower matter, MDL No. 3197, In re Amazon Tariff Litigation, where plaintiffs want every consumer case against Amazon sent to Seattle. Together the two filings set the procedural shape of what has become the largest consumer-side aftermath of the IEEPA tariff era.
In short
- The opposition: Adidas America, Amazon, Canon U.S.A., Costco, Microsoft, two Puma units, three Shein entities, Sony Interactive Entertainment, United Legwear and Walmart filed a joint motion on September 10 opposing a cross-industry MDL in the Northern District of Illinois, CFO Dive reported on September 18. Costco filed a separate opposition on September 11.
- The hearing: the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation convenes at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago on September 24, 2026, with oral argument from 9:30 a.m.; MDL No. 3197, In re Amazon Tariff Litigation, is listed in Section A for argument, per the panel’s hearing order filed August 14.
- The money: Walmart has booked about $2.9 billion in IEEPA refunds, Target $994 million pretax, Amazon roughly $600 million; CBP told the trade court it had sent about $122 billion to Treasury for payment as of September 11.
- The theory: plaintiffs say retailers that passed tariffs through to shelf prices and then claimed refunds from the government would be “made whole twice over at the consumer’s expense”; defendants answer that there is “no alleged coordination, common supplier, uniform representation, or industry-wide pricing decision tying the defendants together.”
- Why it matters for retail: the panel’s answer decides whether tariff pass-through becomes one coordinated discovery exercise into pricing at a dozen chains, or dozens of separate cases that companies like Costco believe they can dismiss one by one.
What did the retailers file, and what are they asking the panel to do?
The joint filing, dated September 10 and reported by CFO Dive’s Maura Webber Sadovi on September 18, is an opposition to a motion that consumers’ lawyers lodged with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in late August. That motion, as CFO Dive described it on August 28, asked the panel for an order “transferring and centralizing” 26 similar cases against more than a dozen large retailers in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where four actions were already pending against Costco, Shein, Temu and J.M. Smucker. The consumer cases were spread across eight districts, including courts in New York, Washington, Michigan and Florida.
The defendants’ answer is that the cases share a headline but not a factual core. “There is no alleged coordination, common supplier, uniform representation, or industry-wide pricing decision tying the defendants together,” the companies wrote, according to CFO Dive. They argued that consolidation would not create efficiencies because the details of the suits vary so widely, and that a single MDL would increase rather than reduce the burden and complexity of discovery. The sensitivity point was explicit: “Each defendant’s pricing decisions and agreements with distributors and retailers is highly sensitive and confidential trade secret information.”
The signatories span sportswear (Adidas America, Puma North America and Puma United North America), consumer electronics (Canon U.S.A., Microsoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment), apparel (United Legwear Company), fast fashion (Shein Distribution, Shein Technology and Shein US Services) and general merchandise (Amazon, Costco, Walmart). That breadth is itself part of the argument. A panel that centralizes cases against a videogame console maker, a warehouse club and a sock importer would be asserting that “tariff pass-through” is one course of conduct, which is exactly the framing the defendants reject.
Costco’s separate track
Costco filed its own opposition on September 11, one day after the joint brief. Its argument is procedural rather than thematic: the company has motions to dismiss pending in the Illinois cases, and, in the words CFO Dive quoted from the filing, “If successful, Costco’s motions would dispose of the Costco Actions entirely, leaving nothing to centralize.” Costco described the proposal as a “sweeping, cross-industry MDL.” The company’s position, in other words, is that the panel should wait for the district court to rule before deciding whether there is anything left to coordinate.
Costco’s dismissal arguments were filed in May, when Law360 reported the company had called the Illinois suit premature “in the wake of uncertain corporate refunds.” A legal analysis published in August by The Business News summarized the defenses as three propositions: the plaintiff voluntarily paid posted prices and so suffered no cognizable injury, consumer protection statutes do not prohibit price increases or mandate refunds, and a claim to money Costco had not yet received was unripe. Whether those arguments hold is a question for the district judge, but their existence is the reason Costco wants the MDL question parked.
What exactly happens in Chicago on September 24?
The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation holds hearing sessions roughly every two months, and the September 24, 2026 session takes place at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Thorne Auditorium at 375 E. Chicago Avenue. According to the panel’s Notice of Hearing Session, filed August 14, counsel requesting oral argument must be present at 8:00 a.m. so the panel can allocate time, and argument begins at 9:30 a.m. The panel’s hearing information page (jpml.uscourts.gov) lists the session and the following one on December 3 in New Orleans.
MDL No. 3197, In re Amazon Tariff Litigation, appears in Section A of the schedule, the list of matters designated for oral argument. The motion before the panel was brought by plaintiffs led by Mari Cartagenova and asks that six actions be transferred to the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Amazon’s home court. The listed cases are Lasseter v. Amazon.com in the Middle District of Florida, Emerson v. Amazon.com in the Eastern District of Michigan, Polistico v. Amazon.com and Rittenhouse v. Amazon.com in the Eastern District of New York, Sangha v. Amazon.com in the Northern District of Ohio, and the already consolidated In re Amazon Tariff Litigation in the Western District of Washington.
This is a different question from the cross-industry motion the retailers oppose. The Amazon MDL asks whether the Amazon cases belong together and where. Amazon, according to CFO Dive’s August 28 report, disputes the underlying claims but has said centralization in the Western District of Washington would be appropriate. The September 18 report noted that Amazon also filed a separate motion alongside the joint opposition, which is consistent with a company that wants its own cases consolidated at home while resisting a Chicago MDL that would seat it beside Costco, Walmart and Shein.
What the panel can and cannot decide
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1407, the panel decides only whether civil actions pending in different districts share common questions of fact such that transfer to one court for coordinated pretrial proceedings would serve convenience and efficiency. It does not rule on whether consumers have a valid claim, whether Costco’s dismissal motion should succeed, or how much anyone is owed. Historically the panel issues its transfer orders in the weeks following a hearing session rather than from the bench, so a decision on the Amazon MDL is more likely in October than on the day.
The cross-industry motion is not listed in Section A or Section B of the September 24 schedule, which was set on August 14, before the amended motion was filed. Its next realistic slot is the December 3 session in New Orleans, unless the panel decides it without oral argument. That gap matters: if the Amazon cases are centralized in Seattle in October, the pool of cases available for a Chicago MDL shrinks before that motion is even argued.
Where did the consumer refund claims come from?
The claims trace to a single date. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held 6–3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. That decision invalidated the “reciprocal” tariffs and the fentanyl-related duties on Canada, Mexico and China imposed under IEEPA from February 2025 onward. Roughly $166 billion in duties had been collected under the statute across more than 53 million entries and some 330,000 importers, according to figures cited in Court of International Trade filings and summarized by trade counsel.
The refunds flow to importers of record, not to the shoppers who paid higher prices. That is the structural fact that generated the consumer suits. Within weeks of the ruling, plaintiffs filed proposed class actions arguing that any retailer which raised prices to cover IEEPA duties, and then reclaimed those duties from US Customs and Border Protection, would be enriched twice. The amended centralization motion put it this way, per CFO Dive: “If the retailer defendants obtain refunds plus interest without compensating the consumers who actually bore the tariff costs, the retailer defendants will have recovered the same tariff twice, once from their customers and once from the government, and will be made whole twice over at the consumer’s expense.”
The first wave was fast. Fortune reported on March 13 that Illinois resident Matthew Stockov had sued Costco in the Northern District of Illinois, alleging the retailer raised prices on tariffed goods and would obtain a “double recovery” if it kept refunds; the proposed class exceeded 100 customers and more than $5 million. The same report described a suit against EssilorLuxottica over a Ray-Ban model whose price moved from $287 in March 2025 to $304 in May 2025, and a proposed class action against FedEx by Miami resident Matthew Resier over $36 in import taxes collected on a pair of German shoes.
The Shein and Temu cases
Sourcing Journal reported in April that plaintiff Lola Russell, represented by McGuire Law, had filed class actions against Shein and Temu in Cook County Circuit Court in March under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act. The complaints allege the platforms “hiked prices far beyond what products were worth to offset added tariffs on Chinese imports,” citing Bloomberg data that prices on the marketplaces rose by as much as 377% on some items after the de minimis exemption was closed and China duties peaked at 145%. Shein and Temu did not respond to Sourcing Journal’s requests for comment at the time. Federal actions against Shein and Temu pending in the Northern District of Illinois form part of the four-action anchor the plaintiffs cite for Chicago, alongside the Costco and J.M. Smucker cases.
The Amazon cases are the largest by customer count. Hagens Berman filed Markland v. Amazon.com in the Western District of Washington on May 15, 2026, for a class of shoppers who bought imported goods directly from Amazon between February 4, 2025 and February 20, 2026. Named plaintiffs Lisa Markland of Maryland and Mari Cartagenova of Massachusetts allege violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act and unjust enrichment, and the complaint describes Amazon as the sixth-largest containerized importer into the United States. The complaint accused Amazon of collecting “hundreds of millions of dollars” through inflated prices and of declining, at the time, to seek the refunds it was entitled to.
How much refund money have the defendants actually received?
The consumer claims are only as large as the refunds behind them, and the refunds are now a matter of public record. CBP runs the program through the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, known as CAPE, under the supervision of the Court of International Trade. In a September 15 declaration, CBP’s executive director of trade programs, Brandon Lord, said the agency had accepted about $134.7 billion in potential and certified refunds as of September 11, with roughly $122 billion sent to Treasury for payment. The next stage, CAPE Phase 3 opening on October 6, covers finally liquidated entries and is limited to importers with their own trade-court case.
The retailers’ own disclosures show where that money landed. Walmart’s chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said in August that the company had received “substantially all” of the roughly $2.9 billion in IEEPA refunds it was eligible for, and that the benefit would be used to lower prices during the fiscal third quarter, per CNBC and CBS News. Target’s second-quarter 8-K recorded $994 million of pretax tariff refund benefit within gross margin, worth $752 million to net earnings and $1.65 to diluted EPS. Amazon told analysts on July 30 that it had received about $600 million in the second quarter, according to CNBC, Bloomberg and Quartz.
Costco has been less specific on dollars. Chief executive Ron Vachris said on the March 5 call that recovered tariff payments would be returned to shoppers through lowered prices, and on the May call that the plan “is to return to our members in some form the portion of tariffs that were passed on to them.” As of August the company had received about one-third of the money it claimed, according to reporting summarized by SlashGear and TheStreet. Costco also sued the federal government in December 2025 to secure its refunds, Al Jazeera reported at the time, which makes it one of the plaintiffs eligible for the October 6 phase.
| Company | IEEPA refund disclosed | Stated use of the money | Consumer suit status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walmart | About $2.9bn, fiscal Q2 (CFO: “substantially all” received) | Price cuts in fiscal Q3 | Joined September 10 joint opposition |
| Target | $994m pretax, Q2 2026 (8-K) | Booked in gross margin; $1.65 EPS | Customers joined the August centralization motion |
| Amazon | About $600m, Q2 2026 (earnings call) | Automatic refunds in a “limited set of circumstances” | MDL No. 3197 argued September 24; joint and separate oppositions filed |
| Costco | About one-third of claimed amount as of August; total undisclosed | Lower prices for members “in some form” | Motion to dismiss pending; separate opposition September 11 |
| Burlington | $55m in its latest quarter | Reinvested in prices | Not a named defendant in the reported filings |
| FedEx | Executives estimated about $1bn paid in tariffs | “We will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges” | Proposed class action in Florida |
The table explains the two camps. Companies that have received cash and promised price cuts, Walmart and Costco among them, want to defeat the theory that a price cut for future customers is not compensation for past ones. Amazon is the outlier: it has already said it will refund specific customers directly, which narrows the dispute to how wide that circle is.
Why does Amazon’s position differ from Costco’s and Walmart’s?
Amazon’s July 30 earnings call reframed its exposure. Chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts that the $600 million figure was modest for two reasons: Amazon had built inventory ahead of the tariffs, and it is not the importer of record for the vast majority of products sold in its store, because third-party sellers import their own goods. “In cases where we did see an increase in costs due to tariffs, we largely absorbed these costs rather than pass them on to customers,” he said, according to CNBC’s transcript of the remarks.
He then made the commitment that separates Amazon from the rest of the defendant group. Amazon had “identified a limited set of circumstances” in which customers shouldered tariff costs, and “When we receive those refunds, we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them.” Supply Chain Dive reported the same “limited set of circumstances” language. That is a direct-refund model, not a price-cut model, and it changes the litigation calculus: the open question for the Markland plaintiffs is whether Amazon’s circle of refund recipients matches the class they have defined.
The other structural difference is venue: Amazon’s home court in Seattle has handled its consumer class actions for years, and the company has told the panel it would accept centralization there. Costco, headquartered in Issaquah in the same district, has instead had to defend in Chicago, where the Stockov case was filed. Walmart, based in Arkansas, faces its own consumer suits as a named defendant. A single Illinois MDL would put all three in a forum none of them chose, which is a large part of why the joint brief stresses that the defendants share no common supplier or pricing decision.
Third-party sellers are the hidden party
Olsavsky’s point about importer-of-record status matters beyond Amazon’s own balance sheet. Most goods sold on Amazon’s marketplace were imported by independent sellers, many of them small businesses that paid IEEPA duties directly and are now working through CAPE themselves. The Court of International Trade is still weighing whether 330,000 importers who never sued should be covered by a class for refund purposes. If a consumer class action against Amazon succeeds on a pass-through theory, the practical question of whose refund is being redistributed, Amazon’s or its sellers’, will be unavoidable.
What are the two MDL tracks, and how do they interact?
It helps to separate the procedural threads, because coverage has tended to blur them. There is an Amazon-only track and a cross-industry track, with different movants, different proposed courts and different hearing dates.
| Feature | MDL No. 3197, In re Amazon Tariff Litigation | Cross-industry centralization motion |
|---|---|---|
| Movants | Plaintiffs Mari Cartagenova et al. | Customers in suits against Amazon and Target, joined by other plaintiffs |
| Proposed transferee court | Western District of Washington (Seattle) | Northern District of Illinois (Chicago) |
| Actions listed | Six, in Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Washington | 26 similar cases against more than a dozen retailers, per the August motion; “at least 25,” per the September 18 report |
| Defendant position | Amazon disputes claims but accepts Seattle centralization | Thirteen companies oppose; Costco separately opposes |
| Hearing | September 24, 2026, Chicago, Section A oral argument | Not on the September 24 schedule; next session December 3, New Orleans |
| Anchor cases | In re Amazon Tariff Litigation, W.D. Wash. 2:26-01670 | Four actions pending in Illinois against Costco, Shein, Temu and J.M. Smucker |
The interaction runs in one direction. If the panel grants the Amazon motion in October, the Amazon cases leave the pool that the cross-industry movants want to gather in Chicago. That would leave a Chicago proposal built around Costco, Shein, Temu, Smucker, Target and the sportswear and electronics defendants, a group whose products, supply chains and pricing systems have even less in common than Amazon’s marketplace has with Costco’s warehouses. The joint opposition’s “no common supplier” argument gets stronger, not weaker, once Amazon is carved out.
The reverse sequence is also possible. The panel could defer the Amazon motion pending the broader question, or centralize everything in one court and let the transferee judge organize tracks by defendant. Panel practice in past cross-industry consumer disputes has varied, and neither outcome can be ruled out from the filings alone.
What defenses are retailers raising, and how strong are they?
The merits arguments, which the panel will not decide but which shape every party’s appetite for consolidation, fall into four groups. The Business News analysis of the first 100-plus complaints, published August 10, catalogued the plaintiffs’ theories as unjust enrichment, money had and received, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith, state consumer protection and false advertising statutes, unconscionability and declaratory relief. The defenses are fewer and more uniform.
First is the voluntary payment principle: Nintendo, defending a Western District of Washington suit, argued that “Consumers received exactly what they bargained and paid for,” a formulation Costco echoed in Illinois. Second is the absence of a legal duty to price at cost: no consumer statute, the defendants say, prohibits a retailer from raising prices or requires it to pass a later windfall back. Third is ripeness, the point Costco pressed in May, that a claim to a refund not yet received is speculative. Fourth is tracing, the argument that prices moved for many reasons in 2025 and no plaintiff can isolate the tariff component of a shelf price.
The plaintiffs’ response leans on economics rather than contract. Fortune cited Federal Reserve Bank of New York research finding that importers paid up to 90% of the tariffs and often passed costs to consumers, and a Goldman Sachs estimate that the tariffs added about 0.7 percentage points to inflation over ten months. Those are aggregate findings, and turning them into an individual customer’s damages is exactly the kind of company-specific pricing analysis the defendants say makes a single MDL unworkable. Retailers that spent their refunds on price cuts, as Burlington did with its $55 million, will argue that the money has already reached consumers, just not the same ones.
The phrase that carries the plaintiffs’ case is double recovery. It appears in the Stockov complaint against Costco and in the amended centralization motion, and it is intuitive: the retailer collected the tariff from the customer through price and then again from the government through CAPE. Its weakness is that it assumes a one-to-one pass-through, which the retailers dispute, and it does not by itself identify a statute that converts an unfair result into a legal claim. That is why the complaints stack multiple theories, and why the defendants’ first move in every district has been a motion to dismiss rather than an answer.
Why the timing matters for Costco specifically
Costco’s fiscal fourth-quarter results land on September 24, the same day the panel sits in Chicago. The company has already disclosed that fourth-quarter net sales reached $93.9 billion, up 11.3%, so the results call will be the first chance since the joint opposition became public for analysts to ask how much refund money has arrived and how it is reaching prices. Chief financial officer Gary Millerchip’s answers on the pass-through question will be read in Illinois as carefully as in the market.
The company’s legal position depends on keeping those two audiences aligned. To investors, Costco has framed refunds as a margin lever that it will hand back through lower prices, a message that reassures members and that Forbes and Axios reported in March. To the court, it has argued that a customer who paid a posted price suffered no injury and that any refund claim is premature. Both can be true, but every statement about returning money “to our members in some form” is a statement plaintiffs will quote.
Congress has meanwhile been pressing CBP to fix the refund account backlog, as covered in our report on the 90-day filing deadline for IEEPA refunds, which keeps the flow of money, and therefore the ripeness question, in motion.
What should retailers and marketplace sellers watch next?
Three dates frame the next ten weeks. September 24 is the Chicago hearing on the Amazon MDL and Costco’s earnings. October 6 is the opening of CAPE Phase 3, when finally liquidated entries become refundable for importers with their own trade-court case, which will move more cash onto retailer balance sheets and, in the plaintiffs’ framing, more potential double recovery. December 3 is the New Orleans hearing session, the earliest realistic slot for the cross-industry motion if the panel wants oral argument.
For retailers that received refunds and are not yet defendants, the practical lesson from the filings is about disclosure discipline. Walmart’s statement that it had received “substantially all” of $2.9 billion and Target’s $994 million line item are precise and auditable. Statements that refunds will be returned “in some form” invite litigation over what form. Companies that can document how refund dollars moved into specific price reductions, by SKU and by period, are in a stronger position than those that treated the refund as general margin.
For marketplace sellers, the Amazon proceedings are a reminder that they, not Amazon, are the importers of record for most goods, and that their own CAPE claims are the asset at stake. A seller that raised prices on Amazon in 2025 to cover IEEPA duties, and has since received or expects a refund, faces the same double-recovery narrative on a smaller scale, without Amazon’s legal department. The Phase 3 rules and the pending trade-court class question will determine how many of those sellers get paid at all.
What the panel’s decision will signal
A transfer order sending the Amazon cases to Seattle would be the expected outcome given that both sides accept the venue; the open question is timing. A decision to centralize the cross-industry cases in Chicago, whenever it comes, would be the more consequential signal, because it would treat tariff pass-through as a common course of conduct across the retail sector and open coordinated discovery into pricing decisions at a dozen unrelated companies. The September 10 brief exists to prevent that reading, and the panel’s response will tell the industry whether “we all faced the same tariff” is a shared defense or a shared liability.
FAQ: tariff refund lawsuits and the September 24 hearing
What is the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation deciding on September 24?
The panel is hearing oral argument on MDL No. 3197, In re Amazon Tariff Litigation, a motion by plaintiffs led by Mari Cartagenova to transfer six consumer suits against Amazon from courts in Florida, Michigan, New York and Ohio to the Western District of Washington. The panel decides only where and whether the cases proceed together for pretrial purposes, not whether the claims are valid.
Which companies are opposing the cross-industry tariff refund MDL?
According to CFO Dive’s September 18 report, the September 10 joint opposition was filed by Adidas America, Amazon, Canon U.S.A., Costco Wholesale, Microsoft, Puma North America, Puma United North America, Shein Distribution, Shein Technology, Shein US Services, Sony Interactive Entertainment, United Legwear Company and Walmart. Costco filed a separate opposition on September 11.
What do the consumer lawsuits allege?
The suits allege that retailers raised prices to cover IEEPA tariffs during 2025, then claimed refunds of those tariffs from US Customs and Border Protection after the Supreme Court’s February 20, 2026 decision in Learning Resources v. Trump, and that keeping both amounts to unjust enrichment or a violation of state consumer protection laws. The plaintiffs describe this as a double recovery.
How much have Walmart, Target and Amazon received in tariff refunds?
Walmart said it received substantially all of about $2.9 billion in its fiscal second quarter. Target’s second-quarter 8-K recorded $994 million of pretax refund benefit. Amazon told analysts on July 30 that it received about $600 million in the quarter and would automatically refund customers in a limited set of circumstances.
Has Costco said how it will use its tariff refunds?
Costco has said it will return the portion of tariffs passed on to members through lower prices rather than direct payments. As of August it had received about one-third of the amount it claimed. The company is defending a proposed class action in the Northern District of Illinois and has moved to dismiss it as premature.
Why is the cross-industry motion not being heard on September 24?
The panel’s hearing schedule for September 24 was filed on August 14, before the amended cross-industry motion was lodged in late August. The motion therefore does not appear in Section A or Section B of the September schedule. The next scheduled hearing session is December 3, 2026 in New Orleans, though the panel can also decide motions without oral argument.
Can consumers claim IEEPA refunds directly from CBP?
No. CBP’s CAPE process refunds importers of record, the parties that filed customs entries and paid the duties. Consumers, downstream distributors and retailers that did not import the goods have no direct claim, which is why the consumer suits target the retailers rather than the government.
What happens after the panel rules?
If the panel orders transfer, the listed cases move to the transferee judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings, including motions to dismiss and discovery. If it denies transfer, each case continues in its original court. Panel transfer orders are typically issued in the weeks after a hearing session rather than on the day.
Does this affect Amazon marketplace sellers?
Indirectly. Amazon has said it is not the importer of record for most goods sold in its store, so many refunds belong to third-party sellers who imported the products. Those sellers pursue their own CAPE claims, and the trade court is still weighing whether importers that never sued are covered by a class. A pass-through ruling against Amazon would raise the question of whose refund is being redistributed.