Republican Supreme Court Likely To End Student Loan Forgiveness

 

Former students with crushing debt, take note:  the Republican Supreme Court wants your debt affliction to continue:

If you were hoping that your student loans would be forgiven under a program that President Joe Biden announced last summer, you should, unfortunately, make other plans.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases, Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown, that ask the Court to strike down the student loan relief program. That program would provide $10,000 in relief to most borrowers who earned less than $125,000 a year during the pandemic, and $20,000 in relief to borrowers who received Pell Grants.

The Brown case is laughably weak, and no justice appeared to believe that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear this case. But the Supreme Court only to needs to assert jurisdiction over one of these two cases to kill the loan relief program, and the Court appeared likely to split along party lines in the Nebraska case. Though there is an off chance that Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett might break from their fellow Republican appointees, all six of the GOP-appointed justices appeared inclined to kill the program. [snip]

The justices are likely to strike down the program, moreover, despite the fact that the federal Heroes Act explicitly gives Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona broad authority to “waive or modify” many student loan obligations “as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency,” such as the Covid-19 pandemic. As it turns out, the most important question in American law is not what the law actually says, it is whether the nine justices on the Supreme Court think the policy is a good idea...

That's the key point:  there's no question Congress authorized the Executive Branch to do what President Biden did.  It's right there in the statutory language.  But, as Millhiser points out, the Republican Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to usurp the authorities that Congress has given the President because its politics don't align with the policy, law and precedent be damned (= cough = Dobbs v Jackson = cough =).

This is yet another reason why we refer to it as the "Republican Supreme Court." It's unimaginable that, had this program been offered during a Republican Administration (as likely as the Malignant Loser pleading guilty to anything), the Republican Supreme Court would not take issue with it, if there would even be a legal challenge in the first place.  Does anyone doubt that?

We've only excerpted a part of Millhiser's article;  read the rest for more infuriating details.

(Image:  Afflicting the afflicted, comforting the comfortable/ via CNN)