U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Student Loan Debt Relief Program
The U.S. Supreme Court (the Court) issued two rulings in
cases that challenged the Biden administration’s student loan debt relief program.
In
the first case, Biden v. Nebraska, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President
Biden’s student debt relief program overreached the administration’s authority
and as such was unconstitutional. The decision was a 6-3 ruling along ideological
lines, in favor of six states—Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and
South Carolina—that objected to Biden’s student loan debt relief program.
Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, asserted
in his opinion that while the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students
Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) does allow the administration to “waive or modify”
student loans, under the law which the program was established, it does not give
the administration the authority to make as extensive and drastic changes as it
did. The number of changes made by the administration, according to the Court,
represented an “exhaustive rewriting of the statute.” Justice Roberts wrote,
"[t]he secretary’s plan has ‘modified’ the cited provisions only in
the same sense that the French Revolution ‘modified’ the status of the French
nobility – it has abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely,”
The “secretary” being referred to was U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
The Court invoked the “major questions” doctrine when analyzing
the case. The “major questions” doctrine is a legal principle that gives judges
broad discretion to invalidate executive agency actions of “vast economic and
political significance” unless Congress clearly authorized them in legislation.
Because of the extensive changes the program would have implemented without the
proper statutory authority and because of the significance economic impact of
the program without Congressional appropriations, the Court determined that the program was not valid.
In the second case, U.S. Department of Education v. Brown, the Court vacated and
remanded the case to the lower court, which effectively dismissed the case. The
Court unanimously held the respondents Maya Brown and Alexander Taylor did not
have the proper standing to bring forth the case. They did not have proper standing
because any harm that may have suffered can not be tied to the student loan debt
forgiveness program, according to the opinion. Though the Court remanded that
case, given that Biden’s student loan debt relief program was invalidated by
the Biden v. Nebraska case, the case can no longer be pursued at the lower court level.
