Jerlian Watch Company, Inc. v. United States Department of Commerce and United States Department of the Interior

A number of watch manufacturers sued the Secretaries of Interior and Commerce to challenge the validity of the 1979 Allocation Rules, 43 Fed.Reg. 60313 (Dec. 27, 1978), promulgated pursuant to the Secretaries’ authority under Headnote 6(d), Schedule 7, Part 2(E), of the Tariff Schedules of the United States, 19 U.S.C. § 1202 . The district court dismissed the action for want of jurisdiction, on the ground that exclusive jurisdiction lay in the Customs Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1582 (a). Because the challenged rules are substantially related to a traditional customs purpose, and because plaintiffs have an adequate remedy in the Customs Court, we affirm.

Prior to the 1954 Customs Simplification Act, products of Guam and American Samoa entered duty free, whereas products of the U.S. Virgin Islands were subject to duty if they contained foreign material to the value of more than 20 percent of their total value. See S.Rep. No. 1679, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in [1966] U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 4389, 4390.

The 1954 Act permitted duty-free entry into the United States of certain articles if they did not contain foreign materials to the value of more than 50 percent of their…