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One of the most notable Indian-American attorneys, Neal Kumar Katyal, has left his mark in legal history by spearheading the successful Supreme Court challenge to the controversial tariffs of President Donald Trump. In the case of Learning Resources v., 2/20/26, in a 6-3 decision. The court held in its ruling that the bulk tariffs imposed by Trump by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 were illegal and that only Congress has the power to raise taxes.

Katyal, one of the organizations representing a group of small companies, claimed that these measures of Trump were unjust, unconstitutional levies on imports of practically all of the trading partners. He defined his triumph as full and total, as restraining presidential overreach. Even with the tackleback, Trump still defiantly declared a new tariff of 10 percent worldwide.

Katyal was born in Chicago on March 12, 1970, to Indian immigrant parents of Indian heritage, a pediatrician mother and an engineer father; he grew up upholding his own heritage and aiming at excelling. In 1991 and 1995, respectively, he graduated from Dartmouth College (summa cum laude) and Yale Law School, where he served as the editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also served under Justice Stephen Breyer and Judge Guido Calabresi of the Supreme Court.

Katyal has had a glorious career in this field, where he served as the Acting Solicitor General in 2010-2011 during the tenure of President Obama, becoming the first Indian-American to serve in that capacity. He tried more than 50 cases in the Supreme Court, the highest number of cases tried by the minority advocates, including antitrust and constitutional cases, among others. Such notable cases as the defense of the Voting Rights Act and the defeating of the Guantanamo tribunals were witnessed in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).

Katyal is a partner at Milbank LLP and the Paul Saunders Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and is co-author of the book Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump (2019). As a married person with three children, he is still an outspoken supporter of the rule of law. What makes this tariff battle important is his contribution as a champion of constitutional boundaries in a politically stormy environment.