The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Biden’s sweeping plan to cancel some debt for millions of people who took out loans for a college education.
Writing for the court’s six-member majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that the cancellation plan effectively amounted to an “exhaustive rewriting” of a law designed to give the U.S. secretary of education certain powers during a national emergency. The Biden administration had argued that the law, the 2003 Heroes Act, gives the secretary the ability to alleviate borrowers’ debt burdens during an emergency like the pandemic.
The Heroes Act, Roberts wrote, “does not allow the secretary to rewrite that statute to the extent of canceling $430 billion of student-loan principal.”
The justices’ ruling came in Biden v. Nebraska, No. 22–506, one of two cases that challenged Biden’s loan-forgiveness plan, in which his administration set out to wipe away up to $20,000 in student debt for many borrowers. The lawsuit was brought by a group of state attorneys general who argued that student-debt cancellation would harm their tax revenues.
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by the two other liberal justices, wrote that, “in every respect,” the majority had exceeded the court’s “proper, limited role in our nation’s governance.” The issues presented by the case, she wrote, were properly the concern of the government’s other branches. And so, she concluded, “in a case not a case, the majority overrides the combined judgment of the legislative and executive branches.”
In the other case, Department of Education v. Brown, No. 22–535, the justices ruled unanimously that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. The lawsuit was brought by two borrowers. One argued that the plan was unfair; she didn’t qualify for forgiveness because she had taken out private loans. The other borrower said he unfairly would not qualify for the maximum amount of forgiveness.
The cancellation plan would have forgiven up to $10,000 in student debt for individual borrowers making up to $125,000 a year and households making up to $250,000 a year; Pell Grant recipients would have been eligible for up to $20,000 in forgiveness.
Many observers had anticipated that the court would void the debt-forgiveness plan. Conservative justices expressed skepticism during oral arguments this year that the Education Department was allowed to cancel student debt without approval from Congress. Some justices also seemed to support the idea that the plan was unfair because it didn’t benefit all borrowers.
A federal appeals court paused the debt-cancellation plan with an injunction last year. Before the injunction was issued, some 26 million people had applied for debt relief, and 16 million of them had been approved by the Education Department.
Sarah Brown
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