Global Courant
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday invalidated President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan, meaning the long-delayed proposal that was intended to fulfill a campaign promise will not go into effect.
The judges, divided 6 to 3 on ideological lines, ruled in one of the two cases that the program was an unlawful exercise of presidential power because it had not been explicitly authorized by Congress.
Biden said the ruling was disappointing but pledged to take additional steps to ease the financial burden on those with student loan debt.
“I will do everything I can to find other ways to help hard-working middle-class families,” he said. “My administration will continue to work to bring the promise of higher education to every American.”
The court rejected the Biden administration’s arguments that the plan was legal under a 2003 law, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act. The law says the government can provide assistance to student loan recipients when there is a “national emergency”, allowing it to act to ensure that people are not in “a financially worse position” as a result of the emergency.
Chief Justice John Roberts said the language of the HEROES Act was not specific enough, writing that the court’s precedent “requires Congress to speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally change large parts of the American economy.”
The plan, which would have allowed eligible borrowers to cancel up to $20,000 in debt and cost more than $400 billion, has been stalled since the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary hold in October.
About 43 million Americans would be eligible to participate.
The student loan proposal was politically important to Biden, as tackling student loan debt was a key pledge he made during the 2020 campaign trail to incentivize younger voters.
The ruling immediately puts pressure on the administration to find an alternative avenue to forgive student debt that could potentially survive a legal challenge.
Proponents, as well as some Democrats in Congress, say the Department of Education has broad powers to forgive student loan debt under the Higher Education Act of 1965, a different law from the one at issue in the cases of the Supreme Court.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said the ruling was “disappointing and cruel” and noted that the Biden administration “still has legal routes to provide broad student debt forgiveness.”
Republicans welcomed the ruling, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky saying Biden’s “socialism plan for student loans would be a rough deal for hard-working taxpayers.”
Separately, the student loan repayment process will begin again at the end of August, after a hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic, though the first payments are not due until October.
The court heard two cases: one brought by six states, including Missouri, and the other brought by two people in student loan debt, Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor. The court ruled that the program was illegal in the case brought by states, but ruled in the second case that the challengers had no legal standing.
The three liberal judges on the bench with a conservative majority disagreed, with Judge Elena Kagan saying that by ruling against the plan, the court had “exceeded its actual limited role in the governance of our nation”.
She said the states taking up the challenge did not have the legal authority to even bring the case, and in analyzing the HEROES Act, the conservative justices ignored the plain language of the law.
“The result here is that the court is putting itself in the place of Congress and the executive branch in making national policy on student loan forgiveness,” Kagan wrote.
The court decided the case based in part on a legal argument put forward by the challengers that the Conservative majority has recently embraced, the “major questions doctrine.”
According to the theory, federal agencies cannot enact sweeping new policies that have significant economic consequences without the express authorization of Congress.
The conservative majority cited the big questions doctrine last year in blocking Biden’s Covid vaccine or testing requirement for larger companies and curbing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit carbon emissions from power plants.
The challengers argued that the administration’s proposal — announced by Biden in August and originally scheduled to go into effect last fall — violated the Constitution and federal law, in part because it bypassed Congress, which they say has the sole has authority to make laws regarding student loan forgiveness. .
Biden had proposed canceling student loan debt during the 2020 presidential election campaign.
The administration eventually proposed forgiving up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year (or couples who file taxes jointly and earn less than $250,000 a year). Pell Grant recipients, the majority of borrowers, would qualify for an additional $10,000 in debt relief.
The administration closed the application process after blocking the plan. Student loan debt holders are currently not required to make any payments as part of the coronavirus relief measures that will remain in place until after the Supreme Court ruling.
The impartial Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that Biden’s plan would cost $400 billion.
