Supreme Court Skeptical of Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation Plan

The Biden administration wants to wipe out $400 billion in student debt, but the court’s conservative majority questioned its power to do so. Six Republican-dominated states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina — and two individuals sued to stop the plan.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical on Tuesday of the legality of the Biden administration’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt, heightening the prospect that the justices would thwart efforts to forgive the loans of tens of millions of borrowers.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicated that the administration had acted without sufficiently explicit congressional authorization to undertake one of the most ambitious and expensive executive actions in the nation’s history, violating separation-of-powers principles.

“I think most casual observers would say,” the chief justice said, that “if you’re going to give up that much amount of money, if you’re going to affect the obligations of that many Americans on a subject that’s of great controversy, they would think that’s something for Congress to act on.”

The court’s three liberal members said Congress had already acted, by passing a law in 2003 that authorized the secretary of education to address emergencies.

“Congress could not have made this much more clear,” Justice Elena Kagan said, adding: “We deal with congressional statutes every day that are really confusing. This one is not.”

By the end of about three and a half hours of arguments in two separate cases, the court’s conservative majority seemed likely to dash the hopes of the 26 million borrowers who have already applied for loan relief, including millions who have received approval. If the administration is to prevail, it would probably be on the ground that none of the plaintiffs in the two cases had established standing to sue, but that outcome did not seem likely, either.

The chief justice, joined by other members of the court’s six-member conservative majority, invoked the “major questions doctrine,” which requires that government initiatives with major political and economic consequences be clearly authorized by Congress.

There was something close to a consensus that the debt forgiveness program qualified as major.

“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans,” Chief Justice Roberts said, referring to the number of affected borrowers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. indicated that the ordinary colloquial meaning of “major questions” encompassed “what the government proposes to do with student loans.”

Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, said the sums involved were legally significant. “That seems to favor the argument that this is a major question,” she said.

Hundreds of protesters outside the court, many of whom were college students from across the country, underscored that point. Mr. Biden’s plan would relieve them of vast amounts of debt, they said.

Kaylah Lightfoot, a sophomore at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., described the prolonged court fight over the program as stressful. “I’m truly just trying to stay focused and keep on going,” she said.

The administration was spurred to act because of the pandemic and its lingering effects. The law the administration relied on, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, usually called the HEROES Act, gives the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” to protect borrowers affected by “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas were skeptical that the words “waive or modify” allowed outright cancellation. “It doesn’t say modify or waive loan balances,” the chief justice said.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said that Congress “could have in 2003 referred to loan cancellation and loan forgiveness, and those are not in the statutory text.”
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