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The Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan, blocking debt relief for millions of borrowers

The Supreme Court ruled Biden's student-loan forgiveness is illegal, meaning borrowers will resume payments without debt cancellation this year.

191 comments
  • Thats quite a precedent. The president doesnt have discretion about his own department of education. Thats a complete undermining of the entire executive branch if its no longer able to make decisions about the executive branch.

    • Well the executive branch is useless, unless you put in the ultimate cheat code of having R as your party initial. then you can do no wrong and use the hidden magical wand behind the nixon painting to do anything.

      • unless you put in the ultimate cheat code of having R as your party initial.

        Sucks that Republicans are so hellbent on forming a christo-fascist authoritarian regime with the only goal being to pump money into corporations and the wealthy.

    • Eh, this was always on shaky legal grounds. Even Pelosi herself said last year that she didn't think the Executive had the authority to unilaterally do this, and as I understand, Biden was skeptical as well. It's a bit of a stretch to say that Congress intended to allow the President to unilaterally void student debt when they passed a measure to allow for adjustments during emergencies.

      The ostensible textualists on the Court are certainly being a little hypocritical, but it's not an absurd ruling.

      • It's at least got to completely parallel the executive branch's discretion with federal drug laws, that they've exercised in not prosecuting for federal marijuana violations. I feel like that's something to watch out for now.

    • Major questions doctrine:

      If a law is so broad that it brings about questions on how one should implement it, rather than asking Congress to fix it, SOCTUS gets to dictate what specifically the answer to the question is. But if Congress doesn't like that answer SCOTUS gives, Congress may pass a law being more specific. That is, the Court isn't indicating that the law, ruling, or order is unconstitutional, they are ruling that it is too broad in scope and that SCOTUS is "fixing it" for the time being. But Congress is openly invited to completely override anything they've said.

      Now of course, "Major Questions" brings about the obvious. "What is the definition of too broad?" And of course there's all kinds of precedent on that as well and SCOTUS saying "well this is broad, but this isn't broad". Since the WV vs EPA (2022) case, SCOTUS Conservatives have gotten a bit more ..... (and it may shock those that I'm using this word) "liberal" in what they consider "broad". And the liberal justices are more than happy to point this out each and every time to the Conservatives:

      It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the “major questions doctrine” magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards.

      — Justice Kagan (brutally assaulting and ripping the Conservatives' jugular while dissenting in WV v. EPA (cir. 2022))

      So it looks like we're in for a whole lot of "quite a precedent" as the Conservative Justices look posed to whip out the Major Questions doctrine to be allowed to "double think". Major Questions isn't usually used this often and by golly the Conservative Justices seem posed to right that perceived wrong, apparently. And the Liberal Justices have indicated, it's not wise to over use this doctrine. The 6-3 bench isn't forever.

  • Well... I'm not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. We all knew this Supreme Court was not in favour of its citizens. The Supreme Court should have been stacked long ago. Leaving it be with its insane appointments just because stacking it might start a war with the GOP was a short sighted move, as the GOP is always going to play underhanded (that's how they managed to get so many SCOTUS appointments in the first place). Biden's insistence on trying to play nice with the GOP has always been his weakness.

    This really sucks for those with student loans who were depending on this. We're already in an economically rough place for the kinds of folks who would have student loans. Inflation has been sharp in recent years and wages have not kept up. In my field of tech, layoffs have been widespread and new grads would be the most severely impacted (they already struggle to get hired and now they're competing against an increased number of experienced people).

    As an aside, it's also a shame that lawmakers have not managed to pass a law for this debt relief. My understanding is that the strike down is specifically because it's not a congress passed loan forgiveness. But congress isn't willing to do the right thing (not in enough numbers to pass a law, anyway).

  • I voted for Bernie in the primaries in 2016, then for Hillary when Bernie lost the primary. If Hillary was president when we replaced 3 Supreme Court justices, we would still have choice for abortion and student loan forgiveness.

    Don't vote for Republicans, they don't care about women's rights, minorities, LGBTQ rights, worker rights, non Christians, and our democracy.

    • Too many people fffked up that decision and voted for the guy with the misogyny, racism and entitlement because his name was slathered on watches and ties.

  • Biden is apparently going to talk about this today.

    • I am sure they saw this coming and have a second punch lined up. Or at least I can hope….(19k in loans with Pell grants)

  • A wake up call to anyone who has student loans. The class war is here, and you're the latest casualty.

  • I'm not surprised they struck it down, but I guess the jaded side of me is surprised they allowed him a different avenue to do the relief instead of making the whole concept illegal.

    Also, there was talk from the Republicans about try to force everyone to pay back the interest we would have been paying this entire time. Somewhat surprised they didn't agree to that as well.

    • There's nothing formal stopping the SC from doing anything, but courts are generally limited to ruling on the controversy in front of them in as narrow a way as practically possible. I haven't read any analysis on this ruling, but just from the little I have seen, it looks like they ruled that the HEROES Act didn't grant the federal government the ability to forgive the loans in the way they were attempting.

      Biden could try using an authority from a different law or creating a different set of rules by which the loans may be forgiven.

      My non-lawyer prediction is that if Biden tries again, the SC will find a new reason to stop it and will make a bigger ruling that takes more power away from federal agencies to make decisions. They've already been doing this with environmental and health decisions, and I'm sure other agencies have been impacted too.

  • When you start feeling hopeless about student loans not being forgiven, remember that PPP loans were all forgiven. PPP loans taken out by businesses and corporations. Domination is the point with all of the subhuman unwashed anuses leading this country. Never forget how they line their own pockets at our expense, and fight against us at every turn with the courts and all three branches of government. All of it has been weaponized against us and no longer serves us in any capacity.

  • With conservatives, the cruelty is always the point. Same applies here. SCOTUS is just enforcing death on the impoverished.

  • This shit is why I want OceanGate to pay for wasting the Coast Guard's time and resources.

  • Someone get with the folks from RIPmedicaldebt and do RIPstudentloandebt for the ones that would have qualified for the forgiveness program

191 comments