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Supreme Court Rejects Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

93 points by sarmike31 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Miner49er 3y ago
Can someone who understands law tell me if I'm correct? SCOTUS said in a brief that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the administrative branch this power [1]. So, SCOTUS has invoked the Major Questions Doctrine (which I think the current court invented?), and through that, decided that this was too much power for the administrative branch to have? Is this a correct understanding of what has happened here? [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-506/251435/20230104222942852_22-506tsUnitedStates.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-506/251435/2023...
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  This is a brief, not the ruling of the court. Major questions doctrine is older than (most of) the current Court, e.g. see MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. AT&T Co. from 1994.
  - Miner49er 3y ago
    > This is a brief, not the ruling of the court. I'm aware, but in the brief they said that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the president this power. Since it's a brief is that meaningless? I don't really know how briefs are created. And I wasn't aware the doctrine existed before, thanks. Though apparently the term was never used in a majority opinion until this court.
    - leftandright 3y ago
      Briefs are submitted to the court by parties involved in the litigation before the court even hears oral arguments on the case. They are one-sided arguments, not holdings of the court. That brief is written by the Biden administration. The Biden administration argued that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the president this power. The majority ruling by SCOTUS did not agree. From Justice Kagan’s dissent: “Wielding its judicially manufactured heightened-specificity requirement, the Court refuses to acknowledge the plain words of the HEROES Act.” (p. 28) So Justice Kagan would agree that a plain text reading would give the administration the power to forgive outstanding loan balances. However, the majority’s ruling was that the “text of the HEROES Act does not authorize the Secretary’s loan forgiveness program.” (p. 3)
cableshaft 3y ago
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- a_subsystem 3y ago
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  - geraltofrivia 3y ago
    Yes indeed. Like would you like the heated pan or the actual fire? /s
  - absrd 3y ago
    Unless you fall into protected categories such as "business owner" or "bank"
  - jackmott42 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    2 million folks (ie voters) over the age of 55 die every year, and 4 million young folks age into voting every year. I find it questionable if this idea can withstand the eventual tipping point when younger cohorts are tired of subsidizing the folks who pulled the ladder up behind them (housing, healthcare, wages that don't keep up and tenuous unemployment, requiring degrees that require debt with no assurance of a job after, safety nets that may be substantially impaired by the time they qualify for them). These young folks (top of Gen Z cohort is ~26 currently) are not why the national debt clock ticks where it does (~$32.25T as of this comment). These geritocracy and conservative decisions will eventually catch up. As I tell my father, "be kind, I will be the one to pick your nursing home." The numbers are very clear who wins when young people actually turn out, so this just adds fuel to the fire. (bit of a demographics scholar when time permits)
  - pianoben 3y ago
    Or, education should be free, full stop, and it should be okay to change things to make that true for as many people as possible.
rqtwteye 3y ago
I think the Loan Forgiveness Plan as planned was just a very expensive stunt that fixed nothing. Instead they should work on reducing education cost (or at least limiting future growth). Otherwise it's just a straight subsidy for schools that will keep raising tuition. Same for health care. The government shouldn't run even bigger deficits to subsidize schools and hospitals without controlling their cost.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  Well they should make public college tuition free combined with wiping out those loans. They also need to make student loans for private schools not guaranteed by the government and at risk of being dissolved in a personal bankruptcy. All the leeches involved in higher education and lending will never put up with that though. So the rent-seeking and indentured servitude will continue.
- crackercrews 3y ago
  Republicans have proposed laws to increase transparency to families regarding outcomes of graduates. They also want to make colleges accountable when graduates cannot pay off their loans. [1] I don't think there has been any support from Democrats. 1: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/gop-senators-introduce-bills-to-lower-college-loan-costs/article_0af35ce2-0ac8-11ee-92ac-13f581b6e7d0.html https://www.nola.com/news/politics/gop-senators-introduce-bi...
  - oddtuple 3y ago
    Because that’s just forces colleges to accept rich white kids who will be the less risky in regards to paying off their loans. Guys, y’all are supposed to be smart, really? You all can’t see through this bullshit?
    - crackercrews 3y ago
      Why stoop to baseless insults? Even if you don't want colleges to be accountable, surely you can't deny that transparency regarding student outcomes would be useful.
mcs5280 3y ago
Ok so next you're going to go after PPP loan forgiveness, right? I'll wait.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  That definitely should be done. But neither party will go after those people. They are donors after all.
- hobotime 3y ago
  All the PPP money I got went to my employees like it should have. I do however support going after those that hoarded it for themselves by fraud.
  - Freedom2 3y ago
    I'm not too up to date on this particular fact, as I disconnected from all that during the pandemic - which companies / businesses hoarded it for themselves?
    - hobotime 3y ago
      I could have hoarded it for myself by paying myself a higher wage, or I could have fired all my employees and hired my family members. I suspect this happened more than a few times.
- tacticalturtle 3y ago
  The difference is PPP loan forgiveness was approved by Congress. Not saying it wasn’t poorly designed and implemented, and subject to massive levels of fraud - but forgiveness was clearly embedded into the law from the beginning.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    It's an important difference. The White House basically pulled this broad student forgiveness policy out of their butts. They didn't have Congressional approval to do so, and were rightfully checked. >We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.
post_break 3y ago
Can they instead reduce the interest rate?
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  The national emergency is over now so they actually can't make changes anymore.
- theodpHN 3y ago
  Earlier this month, the NY Times warned students and their families to "Expect Interest Rates on Federal Student Loans to Rise" to as high as 8.05% for new PLUS loans this fall. That news came as Apple, just days after a recent $90 billion share buyback, filed a prospectus with the SEC for a new $5 billion bond program with longer-term bonds expected to have a coupon rate of approximately 5%. The imbalance between loan rates for students and Apple shareholders was actually far more pronounced before the Fed fund rate hikes started last year in response to inflation. During the pandemic, Apple -- which reported around $166.3 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet as of March 31 -- held a bond sale worth $14 billion for stock buybacks and dividends to benefit from borrowing rates as low as 0.70%. Direct PLUS student loan rates at that time were down to 5.30% for new loans but as high as 8.5% for existing loans (the U.S. Dept. of Education does not offer refinancing of its up-to-30-year fixed rate loans in times of much lower interest rates). Unlike the tax-deductible interest Apple pays, annual deductions on student loan interest are capped by the IRS at $2,500 (or lower, depending on the borrower's income). https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/05/30/2132241/student-loan-payment-pause-gone-under-debt-ceiling-deal https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/05/30/2132241/student-loa...
  - falcolas 3y ago
    8.05% Jesus. That's high. For a $100k loan (not unusual for high paying degrees), you'd need to shell out over $650 a month just to break even with interest.
mikeyouse 3y ago
Aside from ignoring that obviously none of the plaintiffs had legal standing here, the "major questions doctrine" is an absolute sham of a legal theory.. I can't believe this court keeps going back to it to legislate.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  I think it's a reasonable theory (regardless of how they apply it inconsistently). The President doesn't have universal power to do whatever, Congress should authorize specific actions that the President can do, and if those go beyond a reasonable amount of flexibility they would need to authorize that separately. Say you hire someone to paint your house and then go on vacation and when you come back they replaced your roof as well and gave you a $30,000 bill. You would be legitimately angry that they didn't authorize this extra work with you first even if they argue it was related to painting because the roof interfered with the paint.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I've written a number of comments here about how I didn't like the policy at issue here, but I think this is also right.
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    The student loan forgiveness plan was inflationary, poorly targeted and probably unnecessary, but obviously legal. I'm honestly gobsmacked at the lengths this court went to invent standing and rationale to overturn it. Who needs to win elections when you have a permanent higher body with veto over the President and the congress. Between the shadow docket and this nonsense, they can literally shape policy to be whatever they want.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      I don't think obviously legal. I think you're right about the standing issue, but ignoring that, if it had reached the merits without any problem with standing, I think it is not obvious that the policy fits within the bounds of the HEROES Act. I really dislike the major questions doctrine - because I think it should be up to Congress to write laws without some other body second-guessing them about which parts of those laws are or aren't "major" - but I'm also not a strict textualist and often don't find these pure text-based arguments very compelling.
throw_a_grenade 3y ago
https://archive.is/PPb1b https://archive.is/PPb1b
Eumenes 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- alsaaro 3y ago
  Biden's legal justification for student debt forgiveness was the 2003 Hero's Act, which allowed the Secretary of Education to discharge student loans debt in times of national emergency (like a Pandemic). Trump cited this enabling law when he halted student loan payments. The Supreme Court, invented a new legal theory called the "major questions doctrine" they self-cited as justification to end this policy. The Supreme Court is not a King either, though clearly they want to be.
  - Eumenes 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - monocasa 3y ago
      This action was taken before the emergency was over, it's simply taken this long to go through the courts.
    - alsaaro 3y ago
      The Republican Supreme Court ruled against this because it is not simpatico with their pollical beliefs. The statutory authority for Biden's actions is there, that doesn't matter because black-letter law and jurisprudence don't matter anymore, only conservative political outcomes.
Sparkle-san 3y ago
The student loan forgiveness plan aside, this seems like another decision which indicates the erosion of jurisprudence. Standing seems to have been conveniently worked around in this instance and the textualists of the court had no problem not interpreting the law as written to achieve this ruling.
- 8ytecoder 3y ago
  Standing was more blatantly ignored in the web designer case. Nothing had actually happened. It was a hypothetical case.
deleted 3y ago
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tiahura 3y ago
Another opinion, along with EPA v West Virginia, that will be used to undercut SEC/CFTC regulation of Bitcoin.
lamontcg 3y ago
From the Bloomberg article on the same topic: > Student loan payments are set to resume in late August after a three-year pause. Millions of people could fall behind on their debt. So that is going to immediately hit the economy with some major headwinds.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  I think it's non-obvious how this would affect the overall economy. Say you spend $1,000 on loan repayment. That means you spend $1,000 less on other goods. BUT the government now gets $1,000 more income. They need to tax $1,000 less and thus someone else spends $1,000 more on other goods. Thus the net effect is neutral. Of course this is a simple analysis but it shows that it's not straightforward to know what the effects are.
  - frumper 3y ago
    Except the government spending isn’t really connected to taxation. The government spends what it spends and collects taxes for what it levy’s taxes for. It borrows any shortfalls without much afterthought. For any working age adults alive, it’s been very rare we’ve not run a federal deficit.
- willmeyers 3y ago
  This is huge issue. Many people (like myself) left college during covid and haven't budgeted at all for the monthly payments after entering the workforce. There's going to thousands of deferments. It honestly feels like a debt trap of sorts.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > This is huge issue. Many people (like myself) left college during covid and haven't budgeted at all for the monthly payments after entering the workforce. There's going to thousands of deferments. It honestly feels like a debt trap of sorts. Sorry, but that was totally your own mistake. Maybe an understandable one, but not something that requires collective action to solve. Fixing your own mistakes often isn't easy and convenient. So you've got two months to figure out how to work your debt payments into your budget.
koolba 3y ago
Politically this was an interesting ride for Biden. He held it out as a carrot to buy votes in 2022 and the SCOTUS bails him out of actually paying the bill (with our tax dollars...). For sure it'll be part of the 2024 campaign that they need total filibuster proof Democrat control of Congress to get it pushed through. The entire nationalizing of the student loan program was a long con (as part of the Affordable Care Act no less!). It originated with a message of, "We'll save costs by cutting out the middle men!". That was a complete charade as the goal from day one was to take control of the debt so that it could be selectively discharged. Thankfully Trump's 2016 win has cemented a conservative SCOTUS for the near future and they put a stop to this nonsense. Regardless of the outcome of 2024, that's going to his most lasting impact on the country.
- heartbreak 3y ago
  If I recall correctly the financial crisis caused issues with funding for student loan issuance. Cutting out the middlemen was a bonus.
- ahiknsr 3y ago
  > Regardless of the outcome of 2024, that's going to his most lasting impact on the country. No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito... This is will be his most lasting impact on the country or maybe https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/donald-trump-says-hes-been-indicted-on-charges-of-mishandling-classified-documents https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/donald-trump-says-hes-...
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I kind of agree with both of you. Both this Supreme Court and the insurrection will be the historical legacy of his presidency. But I think over time Mitch McConnell's name will be the one in the history books when talking about the latter years of the Roberts Court. Maybe also the thing about doing crimes after leaving office and getting charged for them will set a new precedent. Though I think mostly future ex-presidents will just do the speaking tour thing instead of doing crime.
scythe 3y ago
Kagan's dissent regarding the standing of Missouri was fantastic. I am not a lawyer, but she seemed to clearly cut through every argument for hearing the case offered by the majority. MOHELA is not financially tied to Missouri; states cannot sue on behalf of their citizens; the SC of MO ruled against Missouri's obligations to a very similar entity (MOHEFA) when MO was sued over those obligations (and Missouri, presumably since it was the defendant, repudiated such ties in that case!). Her case on the merits was... less convincing. I'm not convinced she's wrong, but I'm not convinced she's right. I have more thoughts, but they're long, and would distract from what I made this comment for. Nonetheless, having shown her case on standing, we do not need the merits. What is surprising (and disappointing) is that SCOTUS here seemed to have abandoned its usual (good) policy of steadfastly restricting what it has the responsibility to rule on.
- paulmd 3y ago
  You can't not view the standing question together with the standing for the discrimination case, where the court ruled that the possibility of prior restraint that the government had not undertaken, over actions the plaintiff had not taken, in a business that they had not started, constituted an actionable tort/harm that gave plaintiffs standing. The court is now allowing hypothetical harms, pre-crime. And the worst part is, we know that's not going to be evenly applied. The old regime is being swept away, this is now The Terrors, where different groups of people receive a different process with a pre-determined outcome based on which group you fall into. Even if you didn't like the court before, everyone got the same process, and that's different now. Nobody is even pretending there's any legal basis to these standings anymore. If you're in the right group, you can sue over harm to a business you didn't even start yet. You can sue for damage to someone else's business that you're not even a party to (as Missouri did).
Jiro 3y ago
The problem is that if you paid for college by your parents not fixing the leaky roof, living in a bad neighborhood, and choosing a worse college that didn't cost so much, you wouldn't get a refund the same way that someone who paid for it by a loan did. If you suffer now, tough luck; if you delay the suffering, you may get bailed out.
- neon_electro 3y ago
  Presumably, if you got out of college without student debt, you were better able to take the wages from your career and do things like fix a roof, move to a better neighborhood, and save for your children's education. I graduated from my university with a fraction of the average debt taken on by students at said university; I will be happy to contribute my taxes towards supporting those not as fortunate, and the economy would benefit as a result.
  - Jiro 3y ago
    If you let your roof leak so you could pay for college, you graduated, and you eventually fixed the roof, that's strictly worse than fixing the roof immediately and getting a loan instead, graduating, and having your loans forgiven. The person who scrimped and saved had a leaky roof for many years and the person who took out a loan didn't. (And leaky roofs are just a metonym. College is pretty expensive, and paying for it drastically reduces most people's quality of life in a way that's much bigger than leaky roofs, and much harder to shrug off.)
Buttons840 3y ago
The supreme court has been in the news a lot lately, and every time I see it I think about Wickard v Filburn where the courts decided that someone growing their own food on their own land to feed to their own farm animals was participating in "interstate commerce". Amongst all the rulings and changes to longstanding rights, this ruling still stands: if you grow a plant inside your house for your own use, you're participating in "interstate commerce" and can thus be regulated federal government. (I realize the supreme court is only ruling on the cases that come before them, so this is a criticism of the entire legal system rather than just the supreme court.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  Justification: > The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause. Although Filburn's relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself, the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers like Filburn would become substantial. Therefore the Court decided that the federal government could regulate Filburn's production.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    A terrible justification indeed. It moved the bar of responsibility to the impacts of your actions, to the impacts of your inaction.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Yes it's quite a bad decision. Interstate commerce shouldn't mean "any commerce" but that's how they now interpret it. They might as well say that since breathing affects the motion of air which could affect businesses using wind power around the country that it is subject to "interstate commerce" restrictions. (This also means Congress wouldn't be able to pass laws around workplace regulation, minimum wages, etc. for any business that operates within one state.)
didgeoridoo 3y ago
The universities are first and foremost responsible for this situation, especially their predatory Masters’ programs that cost several arms and legs and offer little to no improvement in one’s career marketability. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, and allow creditors to pursue the universities for repayment. Spending $100,000 you can’t easily pay back for a useless degree is foolish, but nobody should have been allowed to sell a product like that in the first place.
- jackling 3y ago
  What Masters' programs are you referring to?
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  I think this is one thing both side agrees on, although both side disagrees on the effect. It would basically mean heavily reducing seats for humanities and social sciences. And increasing seats for technicians and programming majors.
- Simulacra 3y ago
  Universities are the culprit, 100%. Classes students so not need, excessive labs and exploratory requirements, and an ungodly amount of fees. Universities should be liable for these loans.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    I, for one, am thankful that universities serve a broader education purpose than being glorified trade schools. There is intrinsic value in a well-educated populace, beyond "learn to code, lol".
    - didgeoridoo 3y ago
      An English literature degree in 1960 cost about a tenth of what it does today, in inflation-adjusted terms. Somehow, those students learned just fine. Nobody would be complaining about liberal arts degrees if universities weren’t profiteering off credentialism. But if your degree costs as much as a small house, it better lead to a damn good paying job.
synetic 3y ago
Biden must really like this decision. He has never really supported large scale forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. This gives him the political cover to restart payments without upsetting his base. However, the Supreme Court appears to be hellbent to limit government powers in all areas other than those related to police powers, military, and foreign affairs. With an end to effective federalism as it pertains to domestic policy I think it will soon be apparent to everyone that the Constitution needs a rewrite. The structural representation imbalances will eventually necessitate a change of some sort. SCOTUS is doing what it can to make everyone aware of this.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Biden must really like this decision. He has never really supported large scale forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. Yes, that’s why he immediately launched the process to redo debt relief this time under HEA rather than HEROES authority before the ink was dry on the ruling, just announced a payment on-ramp that reduces the impact of failure to pay after the Congressionally-mandated end of the pause, and has used other regulatory authority to launch a new income-based repayment program which will lead to $0 payments for low-income student loan debtors.
  - synetic 3y ago
    The impression I’ve had is that he is against broad forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. It’s been a political minefield in that he doesn’t want to piss off his base. It appears my impression is wrong but I do believe he wants repayments to start again. Note though that the $10,000 forgiveness is less than what he campaigned on. We should not confuse, in general, new program initiatives as an indication that this is what the politician proposing the initiative wants. Sometimes proposals have to be made to appease the base.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > The impression I’ve had is that he is against broad forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. Okay, but what is the basis for this impression? > Note though that the $10,000 forgiveness is less than what he campaigned on. The $10,000-$20,000 foregiveness plan (with an income cap) is less universal the “at least” $10,000 he called on Congress to provide all borrowers during the campaign, as President-elect after the campaign, and sought (but was rebuffed on) as President in the stimulus bill. It's what he thought he could justify as executive action under HEROES (and even that turned out to be wrong), not what he wanted. > We should not confuse, in general, new program initiatives as an indication that this is what the politician proposing the initiative wants. Absent specific, articulable, evidence-based reasons to believe otherwise, we certainly should take them as exactly that, especially when they keep coming back with different approaches when rebuffed. > Sometimes proposals have to be made to appease the base. Yes, but the claim that any particular proposal is merely a sop to the base should be backed by evidence; the fact that it is sometimes true does not, by itself, support ascribing that basis to any particular policy proposal.
zelias 3y ago
Imagine ignoring long held precedent over standing in order to score political points against the President
pwpw 3y ago
I am surprised to see this case had standing given the claim that financial harm was had due to only receiving $10,000 in relief instead of the full $20,000 by a borrower. Does anyone have better legal insight that can explain to me why the case was ruled on at all?
- jcalvinowens 3y ago
  That case (Board of Education v. Brown) was unanimously rejected for lack of standing. It was the other one (Biden v. Nebraska) that was decided. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
876978095789789 3y ago
College graduates on average have higher lifetime earnings than non-college graduates, and inherently have an advantage over non-graduates in a competitive job market: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education... And the people taking these loans out aren't poor: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-owes-the-most-in-student-loans-new-data-from-the-fed/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-owes-the-most-in-stud... >Recently released data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances confirm that upper-income households account for a disproportionate share of student loan debt—and an even larger share of monthly out-of-pocket student debt payments. >The highest-income 40 percent of households (those with incomes above $74,000) owe almost 60 percent of the outstanding education debt and make almost three-quarters of the payments. The lowest-income 40 percent of households hold just under 20 percent of the outstanding debt and make only 10 percent of the payments. It should be no surprise that higher-income households owe more student debt than others. Students So it's unclear to me why these people in particular deserve debt relief, especially when you consider the non-graduates, who are at a marked competitive disadvantage, and have debt of their own, will indirectly be subsidizing it. The "so they can finally afford to buy a home" meme would make more sense if the non-graduates had an easier time buying a home, yet they're even less likely to be able to afford a home: https://corridorbusiness.com/study-college-graduates-more-likely-to-own-their-own-home/ https://corridorbusiness.com/study-college-graduates-more-li... The college-educated now form a powerful voting block, one that was crucial to Biden's victory: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-graduates-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-g... and this whole movement feels like privileged, upwardly-mobile people voting themselves a handout they don't deserve, with money that could be much better spent helping actual poor people make ends meet
symlinkk 3y ago
Why isn’t this on the front page? 100+ comments and it’s not there?
- flutas 3y ago
  Probably flame war'd.
64StarFox64 3y ago
Do any HN constitutional scholars or lawyers who work in adjacent fields have any comments on the ruling? Having only read the introduction (which by definition is not a comprehensive argument, so I acknowledge that I'm drawing conclusions based on an incomplete understanding of the ruling), my intuition tells me the standing sub-decision could be abused by states, and the textually oriented picking-apart of the SecEdu's stance struck me as - forgive my ignorance, but - arbitrary and borderline petulant. FWIW, I'm _not_ interested in discussing this from a socio-political standpoint. I'm just curious to hear opinions about the ruling from a legal perspective.
- oddtuple 3y ago
  From a legal perspective it seems pretty clear there was a lack of standing
mal10c 3y ago
Really interesting reading both sides of this argument, but I do see something missing from the entire conversation (unless someone snuck it in and I missed it): Independent from the side you take on this, this decision was made by the judicial branch in the context of (hopefully) the constitution. If you disagree with the decision, there's a process (albeit a long one (on purpose)) to change our system, but that process resides in the legislative body, not the judiciary. I encourage folks from both sides of the argument to keep that in mind.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  If Congress had forgiven the debt then we wouldn't be having this discussion. They obviously have the power to do that if they choose.

93 points by sarmike31 3y ago

Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf

Miner49er 3y ago

Can someone who understands law tell me if I'm correct? SCOTUS said in a brief that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the administrative branch this power [1]. So, SCOTUS has invoked the Major Questions Doctrine (which I think the current court invented?), and through that, decided that this was too much power for the administrative branch to have? Is this a correct understanding of what has happened here? [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-506/251435/20230104222942852_22-506tsUnitedStates.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-506/251435/2023...

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
This is a brief, not the ruling of the court. Major questions doctrine is older than (most of) the current Court, e.g. see MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. AT&T Co. from 1994.
- Miner49er 3y ago
  > This is a brief, not the ruling of the court. I'm aware, but in the brief they said that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the president this power. Since it's a brief is that meaningless? I don't really know how briefs are created. And I wasn't aware the doctrine existed before, thanks. Though apparently the term was never used in a majority opinion until this court.
  - leftandright 3y ago
    Briefs are submitted to the court by parties involved in the litigation before the court even hears oral arguments on the case. They are one-sided arguments, not holdings of the court. That brief is written by the Biden administration. The Biden administration argued that a plain text reading of the HEROES act gave the president this power. The majority ruling by SCOTUS did not agree. From Justice Kagan’s dissent: “Wielding its judicially manufactured heightened-specificity requirement, the Court refuses to acknowledge the plain words of the HEROES Act.” (p. 28) So Justice Kagan would agree that a plain text reading would give the administration the power to forgive outstanding loan balances. However, the majority’s ruling was that the “text of the HEROES Act does not authorize the Secretary’s loan forgiveness program.” (p. 3)

cableshaft 3y ago

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a_subsystem 3y ago
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- geraltofrivia 3y ago
  Yes indeed. Like would you like the heated pan or the actual fire? /s
- absrd 3y ago
  Unless you fall into protected categories such as "business owner" or "bank"
- jackmott42 3y ago
  [flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  2 million folks (ie voters) over the age of 55 die every year, and 4 million young folks age into voting every year. I find it questionable if this idea can withstand the eventual tipping point when younger cohorts are tired of subsidizing the folks who pulled the ladder up behind them (housing, healthcare, wages that don't keep up and tenuous unemployment, requiring degrees that require debt with no assurance of a job after, safety nets that may be substantially impaired by the time they qualify for them). These young folks (top of Gen Z cohort is ~26 currently) are not why the national debt clock ticks where it does (~$32.25T as of this comment). These geritocracy and conservative decisions will eventually catch up. As I tell my father, "be kind, I will be the one to pick your nursing home." The numbers are very clear who wins when young people actually turn out, so this just adds fuel to the fire. (bit of a demographics scholar when time permits)
- pianoben 3y ago
  Or, education should be free, full stop, and it should be okay to change things to make that true for as many people as possible.

rqtwteye 3y ago

I think the Loan Forgiveness Plan as planned was just a very expensive stunt that fixed nothing. Instead they should work on reducing education cost (or at least limiting future growth). Otherwise it's just a straight subsidy for schools that will keep raising tuition. Same for health care. The government shouldn't run even bigger deficits to subsidize schools and hospitals without controlling their cost.

lamontcg 3y ago
Well they should make public college tuition free combined with wiping out those loans. They also need to make student loans for private schools not guaranteed by the government and at risk of being dissolved in a personal bankruptcy. All the leeches involved in higher education and lending will never put up with that though. So the rent-seeking and indentured servitude will continue.
crackercrews 3y ago
Republicans have proposed laws to increase transparency to families regarding outcomes of graduates. They also want to make colleges accountable when graduates cannot pay off their loans. [1] I don't think there has been any support from Democrats. 1: https://www.nola.com/news/politics/gop-senators-introduce-bills-to-lower-college-loan-costs/article_0af35ce2-0ac8-11ee-92ac-13f581b6e7d0.html https://www.nola.com/news/politics/gop-senators-introduce-bi...
- oddtuple 3y ago
  Because that’s just forces colleges to accept rich white kids who will be the less risky in regards to paying off their loans. Guys, y’all are supposed to be smart, really? You all can’t see through this bullshit?
  - crackercrews 3y ago
    Why stoop to baseless insults? Even if you don't want colleges to be accountable, surely you can't deny that transparency regarding student outcomes would be useful.

mcs5280 3y ago

Ok so next you're going to go after PPP loan forgiveness, right? I'll wait.

rqtwteye 3y ago
That definitely should be done. But neither party will go after those people. They are donors after all.
hobotime 3y ago
All the PPP money I got went to my employees like it should have. I do however support going after those that hoarded it for themselves by fraud.
- Freedom2 3y ago
  I'm not too up to date on this particular fact, as I disconnected from all that during the pandemic - which companies / businesses hoarded it for themselves?
  - hobotime 3y ago
    I could have hoarded it for myself by paying myself a higher wage, or I could have fired all my employees and hired my family members. I suspect this happened more than a few times.
tacticalturtle 3y ago
The difference is PPP loan forgiveness was approved by Congress. Not saying it wasn’t poorly designed and implemented, and subject to massive levels of fraud - but forgiveness was clearly embedded into the law from the beginning.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  It's an important difference. The White House basically pulled this broad student forgiveness policy out of their butts. They didn't have Congressional approval to do so, and were rightfully checked. >We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.

post_break 3y ago

Can they instead reduce the interest rate?

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
The national emergency is over now so they actually can't make changes anymore.
theodpHN 3y ago
Earlier this month, the NY Times warned students and their families to "Expect Interest Rates on Federal Student Loans to Rise" to as high as 8.05% for new PLUS loans this fall. That news came as Apple, just days after a recent $90 billion share buyback, filed a prospectus with the SEC for a new $5 billion bond program with longer-term bonds expected to have a coupon rate of approximately 5%. The imbalance between loan rates for students and Apple shareholders was actually far more pronounced before the Fed fund rate hikes started last year in response to inflation. During the pandemic, Apple -- which reported around $166.3 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet as of March 31 -- held a bond sale worth $14 billion for stock buybacks and dividends to benefit from borrowing rates as low as 0.70%. Direct PLUS student loan rates at that time were down to 5.30% for new loans but as high as 8.5% for existing loans (the U.S. Dept. of Education does not offer refinancing of its up-to-30-year fixed rate loans in times of much lower interest rates). Unlike the tax-deductible interest Apple pays, annual deductions on student loan interest are capped by the IRS at $2,500 (or lower, depending on the borrower's income). https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/05/30/2132241/student-loan-payment-pause-gone-under-debt-ceiling-deal https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/05/30/2132241/student-loa...
- falcolas 3y ago
  8.05% Jesus. That's high. For a $100k loan (not unusual for high paying degrees), you'd need to shell out over $650 a month just to break even with interest.

mikeyouse 3y ago

Aside from ignoring that obviously none of the plaintiffs had legal standing here, the "major questions doctrine" is an absolute sham of a legal theory.. I can't believe this court keeps going back to it to legislate.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
I think it's a reasonable theory (regardless of how they apply it inconsistently). The President doesn't have universal power to do whatever, Congress should authorize specific actions that the President can do, and if those go beyond a reasonable amount of flexibility they would need to authorize that separately. Say you hire someone to paint your house and then go on vacation and when you come back they replaced your roof as well and gave you a $30,000 bill. You would be legitimately angry that they didn't authorize this extra work with you first even if they argue it was related to painting because the roof interfered with the paint.
sanderjd 3y ago
I've written a number of comments here about how I didn't like the policy at issue here, but I think this is also right.
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  The student loan forgiveness plan was inflationary, poorly targeted and probably unnecessary, but obviously legal. I'm honestly gobsmacked at the lengths this court went to invent standing and rationale to overturn it. Who needs to win elections when you have a permanent higher body with veto over the President and the congress. Between the shadow docket and this nonsense, they can literally shape policy to be whatever they want.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I don't think obviously legal. I think you're right about the standing issue, but ignoring that, if it had reached the merits without any problem with standing, I think it is not obvious that the policy fits within the bounds of the HEROES Act. I really dislike the major questions doctrine - because I think it should be up to Congress to write laws without some other body second-guessing them about which parts of those laws are or aren't "major" - but I'm also not a strict textualist and often don't find these pure text-based arguments very compelling.

throw_a_grenade 3y ago

https://archive.is/PPb1b https://archive.is/PPb1b

Eumenes 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago
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alsaaro 3y ago
Biden's legal justification for student debt forgiveness was the 2003 Hero's Act, which allowed the Secretary of Education to discharge student loans debt in times of national emergency (like a Pandemic). Trump cited this enabling law when he halted student loan payments. The Supreme Court, invented a new legal theory called the "major questions doctrine" they self-cited as justification to end this policy. The Supreme Court is not a King either, though clearly they want to be.
- Eumenes 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - monocasa 3y ago
    This action was taken before the emergency was over, it's simply taken this long to go through the courts.
  - alsaaro 3y ago
    The Republican Supreme Court ruled against this because it is not simpatico with their pollical beliefs. The statutory authority for Biden's actions is there, that doesn't matter because black-letter law and jurisprudence don't matter anymore, only conservative political outcomes.

Sparkle-san 3y ago

The student loan forgiveness plan aside, this seems like another decision which indicates the erosion of jurisprudence. Standing seems to have been conveniently worked around in this instance and the textualists of the court had no problem not interpreting the law as written to achieve this ruling.

8ytecoder 3y ago
Standing was more blatantly ignored in the web designer case. Nothing had actually happened. It was a hypothetical case.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tiahura 3y ago

Another opinion, along with EPA v West Virginia, that will be used to undercut SEC/CFTC regulation of Bitcoin.

lamontcg 3y ago

From the Bloomberg article on the same topic: > Student loan payments are set to resume in late August after a three-year pause. Millions of people could fall behind on their debt. So that is going to immediately hit the economy with some major headwinds.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
I think it's non-obvious how this would affect the overall economy. Say you spend $1,000 on loan repayment. That means you spend $1,000 less on other goods. BUT the government now gets $1,000 more income. They need to tax $1,000 less and thus someone else spends $1,000 more on other goods. Thus the net effect is neutral. Of course this is a simple analysis but it shows that it's not straightforward to know what the effects are.
- frumper 3y ago
  Except the government spending isn’t really connected to taxation. The government spends what it spends and collects taxes for what it levy’s taxes for. It borrows any shortfalls without much afterthought. For any working age adults alive, it’s been very rare we’ve not run a federal deficit.
willmeyers 3y ago
This is huge issue. Many people (like myself) left college during covid and haven't budgeted at all for the monthly payments after entering the workforce. There's going to thousands of deferments. It honestly feels like a debt trap of sorts.
- tivert 3y ago
  > This is huge issue. Many people (like myself) left college during covid and haven't budgeted at all for the monthly payments after entering the workforce. There's going to thousands of deferments. It honestly feels like a debt trap of sorts. Sorry, but that was totally your own mistake. Maybe an understandable one, but not something that requires collective action to solve. Fixing your own mistakes often isn't easy and convenient. So you've got two months to figure out how to work your debt payments into your budget.

koolba 3y ago

Politically this was an interesting ride for Biden. He held it out as a carrot to buy votes in 2022 and the SCOTUS bails him out of actually paying the bill (with our tax dollars...). For sure it'll be part of the 2024 campaign that they need total filibuster proof Democrat control of Congress to get it pushed through. The entire nationalizing of the student loan program was a long con (as part of the Affordable Care Act no less!). It originated with a message of, "We'll save costs by cutting out the middle men!". That was a complete charade as the goal from day one was to take control of the debt so that it could be selectively discharged. Thankfully Trump's 2016 win has cemented a conservative SCOTUS for the near future and they put a stop to this nonsense. Regardless of the outcome of 2024, that's going to his most lasting impact on the country.

heartbreak 3y ago
If I recall correctly the financial crisis caused issues with funding for student loan issuance. Cutting out the middlemen was a bonus.
ahiknsr 3y ago
> Regardless of the outcome of 2024, that's going to his most lasting impact on the country. No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito... This is will be his most lasting impact on the country or maybe https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/donald-trump-says-hes-been-indicted-on-charges-of-mishandling-classified-documents https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/donald-trump-says-hes-...
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I kind of agree with both of you. Both this Supreme Court and the insurrection will be the historical legacy of his presidency. But I think over time Mitch McConnell's name will be the one in the history books when talking about the latter years of the Roberts Court. Maybe also the thing about doing crimes after leaving office and getting charged for them will set a new precedent. Though I think mostly future ex-presidents will just do the speaking tour thing instead of doing crime.

scythe 3y ago

Kagan's dissent regarding the standing of Missouri was fantastic. I am not a lawyer, but she seemed to clearly cut through every argument for hearing the case offered by the majority. MOHELA is not financially tied to Missouri; states cannot sue on behalf of their citizens; the SC of MO ruled against Missouri's obligations to a very similar entity (MOHEFA) when MO was sued over those obligations (and Missouri, presumably since it was the defendant, repudiated such ties in that case!). Her case on the merits was... less convincing. I'm not convinced she's wrong, but I'm not convinced she's right. I have more thoughts, but they're long, and would distract from what I made this comment for. Nonetheless, having shown her case on standing, we do not need the merits. What is surprising (and disappointing) is that SCOTUS here seemed to have abandoned its usual (good) policy of steadfastly restricting what it has the responsibility to rule on.

paulmd 3y ago
You can't not view the standing question together with the standing for the discrimination case, where the court ruled that the possibility of prior restraint that the government had not undertaken, over actions the plaintiff had not taken, in a business that they had not started, constituted an actionable tort/harm that gave plaintiffs standing. The court is now allowing hypothetical harms, pre-crime. And the worst part is, we know that's not going to be evenly applied. The old regime is being swept away, this is now The Terrors, where different groups of people receive a different process with a pre-determined outcome based on which group you fall into. Even if you didn't like the court before, everyone got the same process, and that's different now. Nobody is even pretending there's any legal basis to these standings anymore. If you're in the right group, you can sue over harm to a business you didn't even start yet. You can sue for damage to someone else's business that you're not even a party to (as Missouri did).

Jiro 3y ago

The problem is that if you paid for college by your parents not fixing the leaky roof, living in a bad neighborhood, and choosing a worse college that didn't cost so much, you wouldn't get a refund the same way that someone who paid for it by a loan did. If you suffer now, tough luck; if you delay the suffering, you may get bailed out.

neon_electro 3y ago
Presumably, if you got out of college without student debt, you were better able to take the wages from your career and do things like fix a roof, move to a better neighborhood, and save for your children's education. I graduated from my university with a fraction of the average debt taken on by students at said university; I will be happy to contribute my taxes towards supporting those not as fortunate, and the economy would benefit as a result.
- Jiro 3y ago
  If you let your roof leak so you could pay for college, you graduated, and you eventually fixed the roof, that's strictly worse than fixing the roof immediately and getting a loan instead, graduating, and having your loans forgiven. The person who scrimped and saved had a leaky roof for many years and the person who took out a loan didn't. (And leaky roofs are just a metonym. College is pretty expensive, and paying for it drastically reduces most people's quality of life in a way that's much bigger than leaky roofs, and much harder to shrug off.)

Buttons840 3y ago

The supreme court has been in the news a lot lately, and every time I see it I think about Wickard v Filburn where the courts decided that someone growing their own food on their own land to feed to their own farm animals was participating in "interstate commerce". Amongst all the rulings and changes to longstanding rights, this ruling still stands: if you grow a plant inside your house for your own use, you're participating in "interstate commerce" and can thus be regulated federal government. (I realize the supreme court is only ruling on the cases that come before them, so this is a criticism of the entire legal system rather than just the supreme court.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

mostlysimilar 3y ago
Justification: > The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause. Although Filburn's relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself, the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers like Filburn would become substantial. Therefore the Court decided that the federal government could regulate Filburn's production.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  A terrible justification indeed. It moved the bar of responsibility to the impacts of your actions, to the impacts of your inaction.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
Yes it's quite a bad decision. Interstate commerce shouldn't mean "any commerce" but that's how they now interpret it. They might as well say that since breathing affects the motion of air which could affect businesses using wind power around the country that it is subject to "interstate commerce" restrictions. (This also means Congress wouldn't be able to pass laws around workplace regulation, minimum wages, etc. for any business that operates within one state.)

didgeoridoo 3y ago

The universities are first and foremost responsible for this situation, especially their predatory Masters’ programs that cost several arms and legs and offer little to no improvement in one’s career marketability. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, and allow creditors to pursue the universities for repayment. Spending $100,000 you can’t easily pay back for a useless degree is foolish, but nobody should have been allowed to sell a product like that in the first place.

jackling 3y ago
What Masters' programs are you referring to?
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
I think this is one thing both side agrees on, although both side disagrees on the effect. It would basically mean heavily reducing seats for humanities and social sciences. And increasing seats for technicians and programming majors.
Simulacra 3y ago
Universities are the culprit, 100%. Classes students so not need, excessive labs and exploratory requirements, and an ungodly amount of fees. Universities should be liable for these loans.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  I, for one, am thankful that universities serve a broader education purpose than being glorified trade schools. There is intrinsic value in a well-educated populace, beyond "learn to code, lol".
  - didgeoridoo 3y ago
    An English literature degree in 1960 cost about a tenth of what it does today, in inflation-adjusted terms. Somehow, those students learned just fine. Nobody would be complaining about liberal arts degrees if universities weren’t profiteering off credentialism. But if your degree costs as much as a small house, it better lead to a damn good paying job.

synetic 3y ago

Biden must really like this decision. He has never really supported large scale forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. This gives him the political cover to restart payments without upsetting his base. However, the Supreme Court appears to be hellbent to limit government powers in all areas other than those related to police powers, military, and foreign affairs. With an end to effective federalism as it pertains to domestic policy I think it will soon be apparent to everyone that the Constitution needs a rewrite. The structural representation imbalances will eventually necessitate a change of some sort. SCOTUS is doing what it can to make everyone aware of this.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Biden must really like this decision. He has never really supported large scale forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. Yes, that’s why he immediately launched the process to redo debt relief this time under HEA rather than HEROES authority before the ink was dry on the ruling, just announced a payment on-ramp that reduces the impact of failure to pay after the Congressionally-mandated end of the pause, and has used other regulatory authority to launch a new income-based repayment program which will lead to $0 payments for low-income student loan debtors.
- synetic 3y ago
  The impression I’ve had is that he is against broad forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. It’s been a political minefield in that he doesn’t want to piss off his base. It appears my impression is wrong but I do believe he wants repayments to start again. Note though that the $10,000 forgiveness is less than what he campaigned on. We should not confuse, in general, new program initiatives as an indication that this is what the politician proposing the initiative wants. Sometimes proposals have to be made to appease the base.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > The impression I’ve had is that he is against broad forgiveness and does want repayments to start again. Okay, but what is the basis for this impression? > Note though that the $10,000 forgiveness is less than what he campaigned on. The $10,000-$20,000 foregiveness plan (with an income cap) is less universal the “at least” $10,000 he called on Congress to provide all borrowers during the campaign, as President-elect after the campaign, and sought (but was rebuffed on) as President in the stimulus bill. It's what he thought he could justify as executive action under HEROES (and even that turned out to be wrong), not what he wanted. > We should not confuse, in general, new program initiatives as an indication that this is what the politician proposing the initiative wants. Absent specific, articulable, evidence-based reasons to believe otherwise, we certainly should take them as exactly that, especially when they keep coming back with different approaches when rebuffed. > Sometimes proposals have to be made to appease the base. Yes, but the claim that any particular proposal is merely a sop to the base should be backed by evidence; the fact that it is sometimes true does not, by itself, support ascribing that basis to any particular policy proposal.

zelias 3y ago

Imagine ignoring long held precedent over standing in order to score political points against the President

pwpw 3y ago

I am surprised to see this case had standing given the claim that financial harm was had due to only receiving $10,000 in relief instead of the full $20,000 by a borrower. Does anyone have better legal insight that can explain to me why the case was ruled on at all?

jcalvinowens 3y ago
That case (Board of Education v. Brown) was unanimously rejected for lack of standing. It was the other one (Biden v. Nebraska) that was decided. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf

876978095789789 3y ago

College graduates on average have higher lifetime earnings than non-college graduates, and inherently have an advantage over non-graduates in a competitive job market: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education... And the people taking these loans out aren't poor: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-owes-the-most-in-student-loans-new-data-from-the-fed/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-owes-the-most-in-stud... >Recently released data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances confirm that upper-income households account for a disproportionate share of student loan debt—and an even larger share of monthly out-of-pocket student debt payments. >The highest-income 40 percent of households (those with incomes above $74,000) owe almost 60 percent of the outstanding education debt and make almost three-quarters of the payments. The lowest-income 40 percent of households hold just under 20 percent of the outstanding debt and make only 10 percent of the payments. It should be no surprise that higher-income households owe more student debt than others. Students So it's unclear to me why these people in particular deserve debt relief, especially when you consider the non-graduates, who are at a marked competitive disadvantage, and have debt of their own, will indirectly be subsidizing it. The "so they can finally afford to buy a home" meme would make more sense if the non-graduates had an easier time buying a home, yet they're even less likely to be able to afford a home: https://corridorbusiness.com/study-college-graduates-more-likely-to-own-their-own-home/ https://corridorbusiness.com/study-college-graduates-more-li... The college-educated now form a powerful voting block, one that was crucial to Biden's victory: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-graduates-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-g... and this whole movement feels like privileged, upwardly-mobile people voting themselves a handout they don't deserve, with money that could be much better spent helping actual poor people make ends meet

symlinkk 3y ago

Why isn’t this on the front page? 100+ comments and it’s not there?

flutas 3y ago
Probably flame war'd.

64StarFox64 3y ago

Do any HN constitutional scholars or lawyers who work in adjacent fields have any comments on the ruling? Having only read the introduction (which by definition is not a comprehensive argument, so I acknowledge that I'm drawing conclusions based on an incomplete understanding of the ruling), my intuition tells me the standing sub-decision could be abused by states, and the textually oriented picking-apart of the SecEdu's stance struck me as - forgive my ignorance, but - arbitrary and borderline petulant. FWIW, I'm _not_ interested in discussing this from a socio-political standpoint. I'm just curious to hear opinions about the ruling from a legal perspective.

oddtuple 3y ago
From a legal perspective it seems pretty clear there was a lack of standing

mal10c 3y ago

Really interesting reading both sides of this argument, but I do see something missing from the entire conversation (unless someone snuck it in and I missed it): Independent from the side you take on this, this decision was made by the judicial branch in the context of (hopefully) the constitution. If you disagree with the decision, there's a process (albeit a long one (on purpose)) to change our system, but that process resides in the legislative body, not the judiciary. I encourage folks from both sides of the argument to keep that in mind.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
If Congress had forgiven the debt then we wouldn't be having this discussion. They obviously have the power to do that if they choose.