AN INDIAN AMERICAN is at the centre of the US Supreme Court ruling striking down president Donald Trump's global tariffs who argued before America's highest court that the levies were unlawful.
Neal Katyal, the son of Indian immigrants and former acting solicitor general of the US under president Barack Obama, argued the tariff case on behalf of small businesses and won.
"Victory," Katyal posted on X shortly after the Supreme Court delivered its verdict on Friday (20).
Speaking to MS Now, Katyal said: "One of the great things about the American system is what just happened today. I was able to go to court — the son of immigrants — able to go to court and say on behalf of American small businesses, 'Hey, this President is acting illegally.'
"I was able to present my case, have them ask really hard questions at me. It was a really intense oral argument and at the end of it, they voted and we won,."
He added, "That is something so extraordinary about this country. The idea that we have a system that self-corrects, that allows us to say 'You might be the most powerful man in the world but you still can't break the Constitution.' That to me is what today is about."
Katyal was born in 1970 in Chicago to a mother who was a paediatrician and a father who was an engineer, both of whom had immigrated from India.
He is a partner in the Washington DC office of Milbank LLP and a member of the firm's Litigation and Arbitration Group.
In a statement following the verdict, he said the US Supreme Court had stood up for the rule of law.
"Its message was simple: Presidents are powerful, but our Constitution is more powerful still. In America, only Congress can impose taxes on the American people. The US Supreme Court gave us everything we asked for in our legal case. Everything."
Katyal expressed gratitude to the Liberty Justice Centre, which he said "led the fight when others wouldn't".
"This case has always been about the presidency, not any one president. It has always been about separation of powers, and not the politics of the moment. I'm gratified to see our Supreme Court, which has been the bedrock of our government for 250 years, protect our most fundamental values," he said.
According to his profile on the Milbank website, Katyal focuses on appellate and complex litigation and has argued 54 cases before the US Supreme Court.
He has taught law for over two decades at Georgetown University Law Centre, where he was among the youngest professors to receive tenure and a chaired professorship in the university's history. He has also served as a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale law schools.
A graduate of Yale Law School, Katyal clerked for Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court.
He served in the deputy attorney general's Office at the Justice Department as national security adviser and as special assistant to the deputy attorney general from 1998 to 1999.
Katyal received the Edmund Randolph Award, the highest honour the US Department of Justice bestows on a civilian, presented to him by the Attorney General in 2011. The chief justice of the US appointed him to the advisory committee on Federal Appellate Rules in both 2011 and 2014.
In a post on X dated 4 November 2025, Katyal shared a photograph of a traditional kada (bangle) placed on the brief he had filed in the tariff case.
"Thinking of my father first and foremost, who came to this land of freedom… May the Constitution win," he wrote.
(PTI)
