> Did they know it was illegal

it doesnt have to be black and white. they knew enough to spin up a business that when it is overturned they could make money... which means they knew the probability was high.

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It was non-zero but close to zero.

Companies don't want to deal with the headache for many things. It's not a given over what time horizon and how much work is involved to get the refund. It's totally sensible to sell the claim for 70 cents on the dollar for example.

The supreme court absolutely hears cases that are obvious. They do it for several reasons - to create clarity, to narrow scope, to set a very clear precedent, and other reasons.

I think the issue is that someone working in public office had influence to affect that probability, and their relatives stood to gain from it.

I don’t know enough about the ethics laws to know if it was strictly illegal, but it does create a smell.

Suppose a county engineer has influence on whether oil drilling will be allowed (they don’t make policy but consult those who do), and prior to approval their relatives buy up a lot of land in the area. That engineer may not have been the deciding factor, but it seems like it runs afoul of ethics laws/standards.

They weren't buying insurance. There's no insurance payout for the companies. They got a small amount of money in hand, and lost the chance to reclaim any of the tariff refund. That isn't insurance.

Also, the SCOTUS is not a criminal court, it is a constitutional court. If a case is heard there, both sides have not agreed on "obvious illegality". That is unsuprising since in general one side (in this case, the administrative branch of the US Government) is being accused of illegal behavior - when it comes to constitutional rather than criminal questions, most parties do not just accept their guilt, but push as far as they can towards exoneration.

Frequently, however to everybody else, the case concerns obvious illegality.

> And the supreme court doesn't hear cases that are 100% obviously illegal.

There is an argument in about two months' time as to whether or not the Birthright Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment actually guarantees birthright citizenship in the US. There is no serious legal argument in favor of the interpretation being advanced by the Trump administration, that it does not. And yet here we are.

You're upsetting the kind of people who leave their shopping carts in the parking lot instead of putting them away when they're done.

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