The DeLima Sugar Importing Company sued George R. Bidwell, Collector of the Port of New York, to recover duties on sugar imported from Puerto Rico after 1899, when Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States.

DeLima argued that the Collector had no authority to collect those duties since Puerto Rico had been annexed by the United States.

The lower appellate court held the following: The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that Puerto Rico, since its cession to the United States by the Treaty of Paris (1898), was not a foreign country for the purposes of US tariff laws, which required payment of duties on goods moving into the United States from a foreign country.

[1] The majority opinion was authored by Justice Henry Billings Brown and joined by Justices Melville Fuller, John Marshall Harlan, Rufus Wheeler Peckham and David Josiah Brewer.

In 2023, the ACLU condemned the case's description of inhabitants of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as "savage tribes".