Indian-origin lawyer Neel Katyal was at the center of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s tariffs

An Indian-origin lawyer at the center of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling striking down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs has argued the levies’ illegality before the US top court.

Neil Katyal, the son of Indian immigrants and former acting solicitor general of the United States under President Barack Obama, argued and won the consequential tariff case on behalf of small businesses.

The US Supreme Court rejected the tariffs outright

“Victory,” Mr Katyal posted X Shortly after the Supreme Court verdict on Friday (February 20, 2026).

Mr. Katyal, in an interview Now the MS“One of the great things about the American system happened today. I was able to go to court — the son of immigrants — to go to court and say, ‘Hey, this president is acting illegally’ on behalf of American small businesses.”

“I was able to present my case, they asked me very tough questions, it was a really intense oral argument and at the end of it, they voted and we won,” he said.

“That’s the most unusual thing about this country. The idea that we have a self-correcting system that says, ‘You can be the most powerful person in the world, but you still can’t break the Constitution. That to me is what today is about,'” Mr. Katyal added.

Mr. Katyal was born in Chicago in 1970 to a pediatrician mother and an engineer father, both of whom had immigrated from India.

He is a partner in Milbank LLP’s Washington DC office and a member of the firm’s Litigation & Arbitration Group.

In a statement after the ruling, the US Supreme Court said it stood up for the law and Americans everywhere. “Its message is simple: Presidents are powerful, but our Constitution is even more powerful. In America, only Congress can tax the American people. The US Supreme Court gave us everything we asked for in our legal case. Everything.”

For the leadership of the Liberty Justice Center, Mr. Katyal thanked.

“This case has always been about the presidency, not any one president. It has always been about the separation of powers, not about current politics. I am happy 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 Mile Bank Website, Mr. Katyal focuses on appellate and complex litigation and has argued 54 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

He also served as a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center for more than two decades, “being one of the youngest professors in the university’s history to hold a tenured and chaired professorship,” and was a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale Law Schools.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Mr. Katyal clerked for Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as well as Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court. He also served in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice as National Security Advisor and Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General from 1998-1999.

Mr. Katyal is a recipient of the US Department of Justice’s “highest civilian honor,” the Edmund Randolph Award, presented to him by the Attorney General in 2011, his profile states.

The Chief Justice of the United States appointed him to the Advisory Committee on Federal Appellate Rules in 2011 and 2014.

In a post X On November 4, 2025, Mr. Katyal posted a photo of a traditional ‘kada’ (bracelet) placed on a ‘brief for private respondents’ in the Supreme Court tariff case against Trump. “Thinking first of my father who came to this land of freedom….the Constitution must win,” he wrote.