Supreme Court Opinion on Student Loan Forgiveness [pdf]
So often it seems that people are upset about SCOTUS decisions, especially when it's to strike down an existing law, because they feel that what that struck law was doing was a good thing.
It's not the Court's job to decide what is good policy and bad policy. The Court's job is to decide what's legal within the framework of the Constitution, the country's treaties, and other laws. It's quite possible that SCOTUS is striking down a law that was a really good law, and would have been really good policy. But the Court isn't supposed to be looking at that. They're supposed to be looking at our system of laws, and deciding based on that.
To the extent that good policy is being struck down, you need to look to the Legislators (or in this case, the Executive) who are doing a bad job of fitting the policy into our system of laws. Or if that system of laws is the problem, then work on changing that system.
Don't blame the Court when they're doing their job properly, noting that the rest of the government is violating our laws. These kinds of controls are important in the big picture.
That was a stretch of executive authority. From the plain reading of the statute, loan forgiveness and modification was supposed to be for unusual and emergency situations. Payment postponement during the pandemic would probably have survived judicial scrutiny. But broad cancellation was overreach.
If student loan forgiveness is to be done, they should also do something to prevent universities from charging ridiculous prices in the first place. The only reason they started doing so is because they know the government is willing to issue loans to pay for crazy high tuition costs.
If loans are to be forgiven, steps have to be taken to prevent us from reaching this point again, or else history will just repeat itself in the future.
Wonder if they'd weigh in differently on PPP loan forgiveness. I have a feeling we'll be filing a lot of SCOTUS news stories in the next decade or so into the "tragic, but unsurprising" drawer.
EDIT: Yes, bad example, given the replies. The fact that PPP was written into law as a deliberate wealth transfer is what's "tragic, but unsurprising" not what a theoretical SCOTUS opinion on it would be. I'm wrong. I guess if people were smart, they would have taken out a PPP loan to pay off their student loans!
If a single man can forgive $400 billion in loans with the stroke of a pen, why even have a congress?
> It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary. Today, we have concluded that an instrumentality created by Missouri, governed by Missouri, and answerable to Missouri is indeed part of Missouri; that the words “waive or modify” do not mean “completely rewrite”; and that our precedent—old and new—requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy. We have employed the traditional tools of judicial decisionmaking in doing so. Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis—in fact, at least three do.
> We do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement. It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country. The judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The Government’s application to vacate the Eighth Circuit’s injunction is denied as moot.
While I agree with the overall outcome of this case on congressional authority and moral hazard grounds, I must say I am quite concerned about the court's logic regarding standing in this specific case.
The point I like to make about student loans:
The USA gets to print a great deal of money and run huge deficits without incurring much inflation (even taking into account the recent inflation event). Why? Dollars are the world's reserve currency. Why? Demand for dollars is high, partially because oil is priced in dollars (petro-dollar recycling). Why? Well Iraq tried to change this, look what happened to them.. you get the idea, it's partially a consequence of history and our huge military helps.
So then it comes down to who gets this extra money. In petro-dollar recycling, much of it goes to defense contractors. I think it's entirely valid to have a discussion on the equitable distribution of this money and arguments that we can not afford loan forgiveness are total BS. The reason the money goes to the rich is because they own congress. It's in their vested interest to keep the price of labor low- one way to do this is to get people deep into dept as soon as possible.
Student loan forgiveness without ending the broken system that is student loans entirely is an extremely cynical, and in my opinion, evil move. It's just a way to continually buy votes using taxpayer money because the next generation that is indebted will vote for the group that will pay off their loans and give them money.
After listening to the oral arguments , it'll be interesting to see how the court Justified this. In general I agree with the current quartz decisions and personally opposed that forgiveness, but this case seems like it was an uphill battle for those against forgiveness.
Congress appeared to give stupidly Broad powers to the executive in the pandemic Heroes Act. Of course it seems like a stretch to consider someone who got student debt 20 years ago and is making good money a hero of the pandemic deserving relief, but it seemed to be allowed in the order
The margins on the opinion are gigantic. You could fit an entire second column of text into the width of those margins.
I've been trying to understand the rationale of the court in simpler terms. Is this an adequate understanding of the reasoning:
1. Congress delegates some of its authority to issue/handle student loans to the executive branch via the US dept of education and some legislation passed in the past.
2. As President and leader of the executive branch, Biden wants to utilize the authority granted to him to modify the terms of the loans due to the impact of the COVID 19 national emergency. [0].
3. As part of his loan modifications, he wants to forgive a certain portion of the loans altogether, for which he was sued.
4. The Supreme Court ruled that the modifications of the loan forgiveness were ultimately unconstitutional due to the major questions doctrine, implying that while Congress may have delegated some authority to the executive branch for managing loans, outright forgiveness on such a scale would be considered economically significant, and therefore would be presumed not to be delegated. [1].
Am I missing something?
Kagan's dissent says everything that needs to be said.
> That is why the Court is supposed to stick to its business—to decide only cases and controversies (but see supra, at 3–13), and to stay away from making this Nation’s policy about subjects like student-loan relief. The policy judgments, under our separation of powers, are supposed to come from Congress and the President. But they don’t when the Court refuses to respect the full scope of the delegations that Congress makes to the Executive Branch. When that happens, the Court becomes the arbiter—indeed, the maker—of national policy. See West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ (KAGAN, J., dis- senting) (slip op., at 32) (“The Court, rather than Congress, will decide how much regulation is too much”). That is no proper role for a court. And it is a danger to a democratic order.
One can find arguments one either side as to whether or not the HEROES act made $430 billion in debt forgiveness legal by the Secretary of Education, but I can't see how in any way this was _obviously_ legal.
https://www.congress.gov/108/plaws/publ76/PLAW-108publ76.pdf
Biden made debt forgiveness part of his campaign strategy knowing it would be a difficult legal road, and he deserves some of the criticism for creating the expectation that debt would be erased at the risk of them being let down in the future.
Much as I agree that this was executive overreach, Trump did a ton of executive and legislating from the oval office, and the courts did not keep him in check.
Classic example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13771
This should have been ruled unconstitutional, but they let him get away with it and tons of other garbage executive orders.
The courts only care about executive overreach when democrats do it.
On page 23:
> As then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained:
“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.” Press Conference, Office of the Speaker of the House (July 28, 2021).Biden had 2 years with control of Congress. He should have gone through normal channels and passed this. He already spent $X trillions on random "infrastructure" bills, surely he could have included student loan forgiveness in there if he really thought it was important. This feels like a clear political move by him to get credit for something that he never could have passed anyway.
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This is a lot to read and I'm not very good at legalese... Anyone care to explain in layman's terms?
The Department of Education issued the loans. They should be able to decide if they want to collect them. The money has already been spent so the only "cost" is the opportunity cost of collecting. So it's not an appropriations issue.
Disappointed by the outcome, but not surprised. IMO SCOTUS is no longer trustworthy when it comes to impartiality. Polarization has infected every branch of government including SCOTUS. This judgement simply falls along US political party lines. Perhaps, it has never been the case. However, I think we have seen an increase of conservative policy and interpretations of law become the standard due to a Republican super majority.