Friday Fiascos: Supreme Court (In)Justices
The ABCs of the Biden Student Loan Cancellation Cases
Let’s keep this simple. That’s my goal with “Following the Money.”
I want to make complicated financial matters easy to understand. If there’s ever something you read here that is unclear, please drop a comment below. If you’re confused, someone else is too. There are no bad questions.
The best way to explain what went down on Tuesday, February 28 at the Supreme Court is by asking and answering the following questions. That way, we can move together from the basic background of the Biden debt cancellation program to the specifics of the legal arguments. Trust me. This will be painless. You will end up smarter moving step-by-step.
What is the Biden Student Loan Forgiveness Plan?
On August 24, 2022, President Joe Biden announced a plan to forgive certain federal student loans. The cancellation amount for most borrowers is $10,000. An extra $10,000 in loan forgiveness is available for students who received Pell Grants. You might wonder why they get more help. It’s because to receive a Pell Grant, a student must show extraordinary financial need. So, they are thought to be suffering more from the debt burdens.
Who is Eligible for Debt Cancellation?
Low to middle-income borrowers with both undergraduate and graduate school federal loan debts are covered. Also parents or guardians who took out Parent PLUS loans are also eligible. (Hi. It’s Me. I’m that parent. It’s me). To be eligible for forgiveness, the borrow must meet an income cap of $125,000 per individual (or $250,000 per household) per year.
What’s not eligible? It’s important to note that student loans offered by private lenders are not eligible. For example a Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) is not. But if that type of loan has been consolidated into the federal loan program it can be forgiven.
How Many People are Affected and How Much Money?
So, far around 26 million people have applied and 16 million have been approved for debt cancellation. But many more are still eligible. The plan adds up to about $400 billion.
Do Borrowers Have to Pay Federal Taxes on the Amount of Debt Forgiven?
Generally speaking, when a debt is forgiven (also known as discharged), the dollar amount that does not have to be paid back would consider that to be part of your gross income. Yet, Congress has created many exceptions, such as for debt discharged through bankruptcy and so on. In 2021, Congress also passed the American Rescue Plan which to make clear that student debt discharged between December 31, 2020, and before January 1, 2026 is not considered income.
What About State Taxes?
Good question. The answer depends on the state where you pay taxes. Some states define what is gross income based on what the federal law says. In those, the amount of discharged student loan debt would not be taxable. Even those states that align themselves with the Internal Revenue Code had a choice. When Biden announced the plan in August, they could have changed their laws to say it would indeed be income.
Was there more to the Biden Plan than Debt Cancellation?
Yes. There was more. The plan also targeted monthly payments. Current and future students will see their monthly loan payments cut in half. Most borrowers will have their payments reduced by $1,000 per month.
What was the Purpose of this Debt Cancellation Plan?
This plan is tied to the global coronavirus pandemic. President Trump declared it a national emergency in March of 2020. And President Biden has extended the national emergency, with a plan for it to expire in May of 2023.
We all remember the lockdowns, business shuttering, and how the economy ground to a halt. Many of us are still reeling and recovering from the aftershocks. Debt mounted. Inflation is high. It’s hard to get by. So, the purpose of Biden’s plan is to provide targeted debt relief to millions of student-loan borrowers who were and are still suffering from the economic effects of the pandemic.
Where Did the Biden Administration Get the Legal Authority to Do This?
Twenty years ago, shortly after the U.S-led invasion of Iraq, Congress passed a law which gave the Secretary of Education (the person who leads the Department of Education) some special powers. That law is called the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, or the HEROES Act. Gotta love the acronym. The law was supposed to expire in 2005, but Congress extended it for two years. Then in 2007, Congress made it permanent.
What is the Department of Education and What Does it Do?
Congress created the Department of Education in 1867 for the purpose of collecting information about the nation’s schools. Today the Department has 4,400 employees and a budget of around $68 billion. Among other things, it administers federal student-aid programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (called the Education Act). The President appoints the Secretary of Education subject to Senate approval. You may remember the messy Senate confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee.
What Kind of Loan Cancellation Does the HEROES Act Allow and Why?
Before the HEROES Act, Congress enacted earlier laws that gave the Secretary of Education the power to bail out borrowers affected by terrorist attacks. The HEROES Act went further, authorizing “as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency to provide” the waivers or modifications.” Something qualifies as a national emergency if declared by the President of the United States. This applies to student loan obligations.
The goal is to make sure the borrower who “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of” a “national emergency” is no worse off than they would have been if they had not gone through that emergency.
Notably, the HEROES Act allows the Secretary of Education to respond to the emergency quickly due to the emergency situation without the need to go through the lengthy administrative law notice-and-comment process.
Has Any Secretary of Education Used this “Waive or Modify” Power Before?
Yes, yes, they have. Remember Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. In March of 2020 she used her power under the HEROES Act to do two things to help borrowers affected by the pandemic. She paused student loan repayment obligations and suspended interest accrual. Congress then directed her to extend that through December of 2020. After that both the Trump and Biden Administrations used their HEROES Act power to extend those protections.
For debtors it’s been a needed break. Here’s an example. If a student borrower owed say $30,000 that was frozen in nearly three years ago. Now they might stand to have $20,000 of that wiped away. In the meantime, though, no payments have been required and no interest tacked on. This deferral relief has cost the federal government more than $100 billion so far (about $5 billion a month).
Who Else Got Debt Forgiven Due to the global Coronavirus pandemic?
There were many Covid pandemic response efforts including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) which initiated in 2020 under the Trump Administration. The PPP provided loans to small and large businesses. One Republican Congresswoman complained on television that the Biden plan was “completely unfair” for the “government just to say okay, your debt is completely forgiven.” Meanwhile, as the Biden White House pointed out on Twitter, “Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven.” And, get this, one of the student borrowers suing the Department of Education right now got a PPP loan forgiven. Seriously.
Wait, What?! Yes, You Read That Right.
You may be shocked, shocked to learn that, according to Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept, one of the borrowers suing the Department of Education, Myra Brown, whose case was heard on Tuesday got a $48,000 PPP loan for her Texas-based sign-making business. And, you guessed it. On April 27, 2022, of $47,996 of that loan was forgiven.
What Was the First Case About (brought by the Six States)?
The first case argued on Tuesday was Biden v. Nebraska. Six states filed the lawsuit on September 29, 2022 in a federal district court in Missouri. Those states were Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina. They sued President Biden, Secretary Cardona, and the U.S. Department of Education.
The six states claimed that the loan forgiveness plan exceeded the Secretary of Education’s statutory authority and that it was “arbitrary and capricious.” You might wonder what those words mean. Basically, the states are saying there was not a rational connection between what the Secretary of Education found as harm being caused by the covid crisis and the debt forgiveness plan and thus it can be set aside by the court.
Why Do the States Think They Have Standing to Sue?
States don’t actually think. They argue things. But you know what I mean. Four of the states –– Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Carolina –– claimed they were injured by the Biden plan because they would lose tax revenue when the debt discharge is not treated as income under federal law. (And those states follow the federal definitions of gross income). Also, Arkansas and Nebraska claimed they would be harmed because students would consolidate their private student loans into direct loans in order to qualify for the cancellation. These states say this would deprive them of income they earned servicing (meaning collecting) those private loans.
Finally, Missouri claimed it was hurt because a separate entity it set up called MOHELA (short for the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority) collects payments from federal student loans borrowers.
Did the States Win Their Case Below?
No. Missouri Federal Judge Henry E. Autrey did not even reach that question of whether the law was arbitrary and capricious. Instead, he dismissed the case on October 20, saying the states had no standing to sue. Standing is necessary under Article III of Constitution in order for a federal court to hear a case.
Specifically, Judge Autrey rejected the argument that the plan would deprive the states of tax revenue. Judge Autrey also rejected the argument that Arkansas and Nebraska would suffer financial harm. As for Missouri, he disagreed with Missouri’s argument that it could sue for MOEHLA. The court said no to that because MOHELA is a distinct legal entity from the state, has not been considered an “arm of the State”; can “sue and be sued in its own name” and “retains financial independence” from Missouri.
The states appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 8th Circuit held that Missouri likely had standing to sue but did not mention the other states. The judge then issued a nationwide injunction pending the appeal that stopped the Biden Administration from discharging any debt. It did not reach the merits of whether the law should be struck down.
What is the Second Case About (brought by the Two Borrowers)?
The second case was Department of Education et al v. Brown et al. The borrowers who sued were Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor. On October 10, 2022, they sued the Department of Education and Secretary Cardona, in a federal district court in Texas.
Their only claim was that that the Department improperly established the plan without notice-and-comment rulemaking and without engaging in the Education Act’s negotiated-rulemaking process.
How do they have standing? Let’s start with Myra Brown. She owes $17,000, but her student loans came from a commercial lender and are not eligible for cancellation. And Alexander Taylor has $35,000 in federal loans, but he is only eligible for $10,000 in relief because he is not a Pell Grant recipient.
Did the Two Borrowers Win Their Case Below?
Yes. Mark Pittman, the federal judge in Texas granted summary judgment in favor of Brown and Taylor. This means Judge Pittman ruled as a matter of law against the Biden Administration without having a trial.
First, Judge Pittman decided Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor had standing to challenge the Biden plan because they claim that the lack of notice and comment stole from them of the opportunity to urge the Secretary of Education to expand the plan’s eligibility criteria. Brown would have asked for the plan to cover her private loans, and Taylor would have pushed to get more forgiven.
Secondly, Judge Pittman decided to go rule on the merits. And he went further than that. He should have deferred to the Secretary of Education as he administers the law in question.
But he rejected precedent, the Chevron Doctrine which dates back to 1984. Under this approach, if a statute that an agency administers is not precisely clear on an issue, the courts should defer to that agency’s interpretation as long as the interpretation is not unreasonable.
Judge Pittman instead determined that the Biden loan forgiveness plan was “an agency action of vast economic and political significance,” and therefore that instead of the Cheron Doctrine, “the major-questions doctrine applies.” And ruled the debt cancellation plan unlawful and vacated in nationwide.
What in the World is this “Major Questions Doctrine”?
While some lower courts and commentators have used this expression for years, according to the Congressional Research Service, it was not until 2022 that the Supreme Court itself mentioned it in an opinion.
Even though SCOTUS did not mention it as a doctrine before 2022, it has on occasion before rejected the “Chevron deference” approach when a “major question” is involved. There have been many cases in recent years where SCOTUS flexes its muscles and jumps in to take away power that Congress gave to a federal agency.
As the Supreme Court explained in that 2022 case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, “Precedent teaches that there are ‘extraordinary cases’ in which the ‘history and the breadth of the authority that [the agency] has asserted,’ and the ‘economic and political significance’ of that assertion, provide a ‘reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer such authority.”How Did the Biden Administration Perform at SCOTUS on Tuesday?
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar arguing for the Biden Administration was brilliant. I cannot say the same thing about the lawyers for the defense. What follows are some of the key points she made and how she responded to challenges.
SG Prelogar contended that the waiver and modification of the statute that governs the student loan program is appropriate under the HEROES Act and the "major questions doctrine" should not apply.*****
Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back questioning whether the word "modify" any Title IV provisions as permitted in the HEROES Act could include cancelling half a trillion dollars in loans. He said “We're talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of ‘modifying’”.Solicitor General Prelogar reminded Chief Justice Roberts that “here, of course, we have a broader phrase, ‘waive or modify.’ It's undisputed and the states aren't contesting that the ordinary meaning of ‘waive’ means to eliminate an obligation in its entirety. And I think, if you look at that phrase in the context of the statute, that means that ‘modify’ has to mean making a change up to the point of wholesale elimination. It would be really strange for Congress to say you can eliminate obligations altogether or tweak them just the littlest bit, but you can't do anything in between.”
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor was somewhat skeptical and inquired given the dollar amounts, why wouldn’t the major question doctrine apply.
In response, Prelogar explained that other factors besides economic and political significance are at play in triggering the doctrine. This would include “common-sense understandings of how Congress is likely to legislate” and whether “the agency is claiming extravagant regulatory authority that it doesn't actually have.” She also argued that the loan forgiveness plan was a benefits program and not a regulatory action, so the federal question doctrine should not apply.
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Justice Clarence Thomas asked whether this plan could be considered an appropriation that should have to be approved by Congress.
Prelogar said that “implementing this program doesn't require that any money be drawn from the Treasury, and so I don't think that it strictly raises an appropriations issue, which is why I think the states aren't raising that argument here.”
*****
Several Justices had questions on standing. For example, Justice Sotomayor pointed out that the states complaining about lost tax revenue might also consider under a cost-benefit analysis the increased revenue they might receive with people having more money to spend.
Prelogar responded that this did not even need to be reached as “As a legal matter, we haven't asked the Court to rely on that as a basis for standing because we think that the invocation of these harms to tax revenues are so easily answered under this Court's precedent.” Specifically, there is nothing that requires the states to tie their definition of gross income to the federal tax code.”
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Justice Elena Kagan asked Solictor General Prelogar to address the other sides’ arguments (both the states and the borrowers) that essentially relate to whether the plan was tied closely enough to the pandemic to make it fit the statute. They argue that the borrowers it targets aren't worse off because of the pandemic” so why isn’t it ‘arbitrary and capricious’ and thus unlawful?
Prelogar responded in detail that Secretary Cardona carefully documented the effects the pandemic had on borrowers. She reminded the Justices that the pandemic “already necessitated unprecedented levels of aid that we've never seen before, $5 trillion in other pandemic relief efforts.” This included the loan deferrals (mentioned above first put in place by Secretary DeVos under the HEROES Act). In that context, Prelogar said that Secretary Cardona explained, “using data that he examined, that huge swaths, substantial percentages of borrowers were going to be at serious risk of default and delinquency or inability to pay their loans once forbearance ends.”
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Justice Neil Gorsuch (you might remember him from the frozen truck driver case that came up in his confirmation hearing), focused in on what he called “fairness.” He asked Solictor General Prologar, whether this Biden plan is fair “ for example, people who have paid their loans, people who don't -- plan their lives around not seeking loans and people who are not eligible for loans in the first place and that a half a trillion dollars is being diverted to one group of favored persons over others.” He went on to complain that he did no see anything in the briefs from the Biden Administration addressing this.
Prelogar replied “No, there's not, but that's because I think that those kinds of arguments are inconsistent with the statutory scheme that Congress set up here. Congress already made the judgment that in the context of a national emergency, you should be able to provide borrowers with this kind of relief to serve this purpose.”
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was brilliant. Her analysis makes the most sense to me. She said, “what I've been mulling and wondering is whether the same concerns about the political significance of this case that the Chief pointed to could be a reason for us to hold the line in terms of thinking about our standing doctrine and whether or not we should expand it in this area.” She added that “ I understood that the standing bar really, you know, as applied in a case like this, would allow the political branches to hash this out without interference from a torrent of lawsuits brought by states and entities and individuals who don't have a real personal stake in the outcome.“
What Kinds of Questions did lawyers for the States and Borrowers Face?
Solicitor General of Nebraska, James Campbell argued for the states. The Justices who grilled him seemed very focused on the question of whether Missouri had standing via this separate agency it set up called MOHELA (the Missouri Higher Education Loan Association.
Campbell contended that “MOHELA's operating revenue from direct loans will be cut and overall that amounts to about 40 percent of its operating revenue.”
The most skeptical about Missouri’s standing seemed to be Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett. It was made clear that MOHELA was not in court and had not brought its own lawsuit and even had to be given the state equivalent of a FOIA request from the state of Missouri to hand over documents. Their questions leaned toward agreeing with the federal district who rejected Missouri’s standing.
When asked about his thoughts on whether the Secretary of Education was using its authority under the HEROES Act, Campbell said no, it was a “wholesale rewriting.”
Is that Frozen Truck Driver Case Actually Relevant Here?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Let’s go back to that, as it will show you just how far the conservative justices like Gorsuch would go to try to kill the Chevron Doctrine, and why I would expect he will rule against Biden in this case.
Alphonse Maddin was an employee who abandoned his truck so he would not freeze to death. The brakes on the 50 foot plus trailer froze. The temperature in the cab of the truck was negative 15 degrees while he waited for hours for a repairman. His manager ordered him to stay put but Maddin thought he was going to die. So, he detached the cab, drove it to a gas station as he was low on fuel and when he returned there was a repairman who fixed the brakes and Maddin delivered the cargo. Still, the company fired him for abandoning the trailer and goods.
The truck driver sued under a law that protects whistleblowing workers who refuse to operate vehicles in dangerous conditions. Under that statute, it’s unlawful an employer to fire an employee who “refuses to operate a vehicle because ․. the employee has a reasonable apprehension of serious injury to the employee or the public because of the vehicle's hazardous safety or security condition.” Also an employee seeking protection under the law has to show he “sought from the employer” yet was “unable to obtain, correction of the hazardous safety or security condition.”
Based on that law, Maddin filed his complaint with OSHA, an agency within the Department of Labor. OSHA dismissed his complained, so he asked for a hearing in front of a DOL administrative law judge. Maddin won. The employer appealed. After the Administrative Review Board affirmed, the employer appealed again and the case landed at the 10th Circuit. The court affirmed truck driver Maddin’s victory. They applied the Chevron deference to the adminisrative law judge and review board below. And disagreed with the corporation who read the word “operate” to only mean drive.
The majority had precedent to back up the decision, writing “under the ARB's interpretation, the refusal-to-operate provision could cover a situation in which an employee refuses to use his vehicle in the manner directed by his employer even if that refusal results in the employee driving the vehicle." They cited a case in which refusing to operated was found to include “an employee who partially unloads an overweight trailer in direct contravention of his employer's instruction to continue pulling the overweight trailer on the public roadways.” They also cited another case explaining that “an employee who moves a disabled trailer from the middle of a busy roadway to the shoulder of the road after being told by his employer to remain in the roadway, has refused to operate his vehicle for purposes of the …whistle-blower protection under the interpretation of [the law] as adopted by the” review board.
But, Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion siding with corporation who fired the truck driver. In that dissent he lambasted the majority for deferring to the Department of Labor under the Chevron Doctrine.When grilled about the case at his 2017 confirmation hearing, Gorsuch said, “Mr. Maddin chose to operate his vehicle, to drive away, and therefore wasn’t protected by the law.” He complained to the Senators questioning him, “My job is to apply the law that you write. The law as written said he would be protected if he refused to operate. By any plain understanding, he operated the vehicle.” This was not Gorsuch being right. He was wrong, but not stupid. Instead, he was being stubborn and power-grabbing.
What about the Second Case Involving the Borrowers?
Here are some highlights. Solicitor General Prelogar made excellent points on why these borrowers do not have standing. “On standing, Respondents' asserted injury is a complete mismatch for the relief they seek. They claim to want greater loan forgiveness than the plan provides, but they ask this Court to hold that the HEROES Act doesn't authorize loan forgiveness at all.” In other words Brown would gain nothing, and Taylor would be giving up the $10,000 in cancellation he would have gotten.
In response to this, the attorney for the borrowers, J. Michael Connolly insisted (in a way I found utterly unconvincing) that invalidating the plan would actually be ideal for them as they would then have an opportunity to have their voices heard by submitting a comment to the Secretary of Education if he tried again by proposing a rule under the Education Act.
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The most infuriating part of the arguments on Tuesday was the fairness points that took up quite some time. Chief Justice Roberts dove into this and I was a bit frustrated with Prelogar’s responses here. He so much shows his hand that he think he should be a legislator and not a judge. NOTE: In an earlier draft I thought this had been Alito.
Justice Roberts came up with a hypothetical aggrieved person. “You know, you have two situations, both two kids come out of high school, they can't afford college, one takes a loan, and the other says, well, I'm going to, you know, try my hand at setting up a lawn care service, and he takes out a bank loan for that. At the end of four years, we know statistically that the person with the college degree is going to do significantly financially better over the course of life than the person without. And then along comes the government and tells that person: You don't have to pay your loan. Nobody's telling the person who is trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn't have to pay his loan. He still does, even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of the loan for the -- the college graduate, who's now going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime.”
Later, Justice Alito picked up the hypothetical and then went on back and forth with Prelogar and also said, “Why was it fair to the people who didn't get arguably comparable relief? Now it may be that their interests were outweighed by the interests of those who were benefitted or they were somehow less deserving of solicitude, but what is your answer to that question?”
I was then pleased with how Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan spoke up quite a bit on this. Comments to their fellow justices, perhaps more than questions. For example, Justice Sotomayor jumped in to rescue Prelogar, “I take your bottom-line answer to be, everybody suffered in the pandemic, but different people got different benefits because they qualified under different programs, correct?” Prelogar responded, “That’s right, there have been enormous relief efforts.”But, I especially loved, Sotomayor’s next comment “There's inherent unfairness in society because we're not a society of unlimited resources. Every law has people who encompass it or people outside it. Correct?”
Kagan also jumped in, “Congress passed a statute that dealt with loan repayment for colleges, and it didn't pass a statute that dealt with loan repayment for lawn businesses. And so Congress made a choice, and that may have been the right choice or it may have been the wrong choice, but that's Congress's choice. And you're saying that the Secretary implemented his powers under Congress's choice, which gave him authority over loan repayment. Definitely did not give him authority over loans for lawn care.”
By the way, has the Federal Government “Bailed Out” Debtors Before Using General Authority from Years Earlier?
OMG. Where do I begin? Remember the big bank bailouts of 2008 and beyond? In addition to Congress passing the bailout law (called the Troubled Asset Relief Program where it planned initially to buy toxic mortgages from failing financial firms), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (aka the Fed) entered the rescue mode too. In 1932, Congress granted the Fed emergency authority under Section 13(3) to loan money to nonbank financial institutions. The Fed invoked that authority when it created numerous emergency lending programs and authorized direct loans to broker dealers and insurance companies and others that owed a lot in debt and could not pay it back when it was due. At the peak, the Fed had $700 billion in loans outstanding. Sadly, little was done to save million of families from losing their homes to foreclosure.
If you want more details, check out my book Other People’s Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Toxic Bankers, and Captive Regulators Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business (Yale Press 2015). The paperback is more updated than the hardcover from 2014.Why Doesn’t the Supreme Court Mind Its Own Business and Leave it To Congress to Take Away Powers It’s Given to an Agency?
That’s a good question. It seems like several of the conservative Justices are acting in a political fashion and should leave those decisions to the political branches. And, it’s a way to dismantle the administrative state, something conservatives have been working on since FDR’s days. I agree with Justice Jackson; the court should hold the line. These parties do not have standing. And, even if the court sees that they do, I agree with Solicitor General Prelogar. The Major Questions doctrine does not apply.
The bottom line for me is the question of who decides whether this debt cancellation program is fair or necessary or rationally linked to the pandemic crisis. To me the answer is the Secretary of Education. This is because Congress in 2003 gave the Secretary broad authority during times of national emergency to waive or modify student loan obligations. I am offended that the Justices may refuse to defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation of the law.
When Will the Court Decide and What’s Next?
The end of the term is in June. This is one of the very big cases of the term so I would expect the Supreme Court to wait until the very last possible minute to release their decision. There are three possible outcomes. The best would be if the Biden administration were to win on the merits, then the plan goes forward. The next best would be that the Court holds that none of the parties have standing to sue. That would be a temporary victory as someone else could come forward with standing.
If the Biden administration loses on the merits, then it’s possible that the Secretary of Education will use its authority under the Education Act and go through the time-consuming administrative law process. This would involve issuing a proposed loan forgiveness “rulemaking,” seeking comment and then issuing a final rule. After that there would likely be additional litigation with parties who can establish standing challenging the rule on different grounds.
Besides Fuming, What Can We Do to Make a Difference?
Believe or not, our voices really matter. The biggest obstacle to loan forgiveness or any progressive change, actually, is the widespread belief that more people are resentful when other people get help that they themselves did not get. We must push back against this. With this reasoning, medical advancements would have to be halted because prior generations did not benefit from them. Have you ever notices that when the wealthy and well-connected get help people in power ignore the fairness argument? Together we are stronger. Shared prosperity is a real possibility if we don’t nickel and dime each other while the elites laugh at us all the way to the bank.
Friday Fiascos: Supreme Court (In)Justices
Thanks for this very thorough recap of the oral argument! This case only applies to the forgiveness under the HEROES act and not to the temporary changes made to the PSLF program, correct?
Jen! You came through for me! FINALLY! I grok what's going on with the Student Loan cases!