Yesterday, the corrupt majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to greenlight discrimination in our education system by overturning 45 years of precedent. By striking down affirmative action, justices ignored hundreds of years of slavery and decades of Jim Crow, deciding that generational violence and inequality no longer play a part in society.
This will have devastating consequences on those who have been historically excluded, undervalued, and overlooked -- especially Black, brown, and Indigenous students.
But the court was not done.
Today, SCOTUS blocked President Biden from implementing his student debt relief plan, despite the president’s clear legal authority to do so. Biden’s plan would have provided $10,000 in relief for federal education debt for anyone who made less than $125,000 in 2020 or 2021 -- and to cancel an additional $10,000 for anyone who received Federal Pell Grants.
It is important to note that education debt is a racial and social justice issue. Loans with high interest rates keep people mired in debt their whole lives, simply for seeking higher education.
Student loans widen the racial wealth gap and disproportionately harm Black women.
Thankfully, there is still plenty that the Biden administration can do. Instead of citing a national emergency to cancel education debt, which the Supreme Court just struck down, the president can instead cite the Higher Education Act of 1965, which covers federal aid programs including student loans and provides the Secretary of Education with the ability to waive federal education loans.1
Right now, nearly 45 million Americans are saddled with education debt, which further entrenches systemic racism and the cycle of poverty.
Meanwhile, billionaires are buying Supreme Court justices, including hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer who funded the lawsuits against student debt relief. ProPublica recently reported that Singer took Justice Alito on a luxury fishing vacation to Alaska worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that Alito never reported.2
At the same time, Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose that billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow paid for Thomas’s nephew’s private school education.3 Apparently, Justice Thomas has no problem secretly taking payments from billionaires to pay for his own family’s education while tens of millions of working class Americans are denied the ability to begin families, buy homes, and build generational wealth.
Canceling student debt would relieve a heavy burden from struggling families and get us closer to a world where we can all not only survive, but thrive.
In solidarity,
-- Rashida
1 Advocates: This 1965 law could be used to cancel student debt
2 Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court
3 Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition.
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