This story was originally published in Vanity Fair.
The Supreme Court has struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan, ruling 6-3 that the administration overstepped its authority in moving to forgive up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients and $10,000 for federal borrowers. “The text of the HEROES Act does not authorize the Secretary’s loan forgiveness program,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
The Friday ruling came in response to two cases before the high court challenging the Biden forgiveness program, which was put on hold by an appeals court last fall: One from the conservative Job Creators Network, which questioned who would qualify for relief, and another from a handful of GOP-led states, which sought to kill the program outright. The dissent, led by liberal Justice Elena Kagan, argued that the court's "first overreach in this case is deciding it at all." Under Article III of the Constitution, Kagan wrote, “a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy.”
But the conservative majority disagreed, as foreshadowed by their oral arguments earlier this year. As Roberts said back in February, “We take very seriously the idea of separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse."
That effectively dooms the Biden program, a major loss for the working and middle class families that would have gotten “breathing room” under the plan, as the president said when he announced it last summer. Biden's relief program would have canceled debt for millions of Americans earning less than $125,000 annually and married couples with a household income of less than $250,000. Repayments—which have been on pause since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—are now set to begin later this summer.
The decision, which marks a severe blow to the executive branch, is yet another assertion of power by the Supreme Court, which was criticized for even taking on the student debt plan cases, given the dubious standing of the plaintiffs. "There’s a difference between answering questions in a way that we think are incorrect," as University of Texas Law School’s Steve Vladeck, who consulted with the White House on the case, told me earlier this month, "and the court exercising power that we don’t think it has.”
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