9 ms·
Supreme Court Opinion on Student Loan Forgiveness [pdf]
- aaomidi 3y ago[flagged]
- malfist 3y ago[flagged]
- phone8675309 3y agoOne should never assume that anyone, by virtue of holding office, has a moral compass. Often the realities of operating in the political arena run counter to having a moral compass.
- malfist 3y agoI never assumed anything. Just wished it were so.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoPPP loans were a raiding of the treasury using COVID as an excuse. Trump fired the inspector general in charge of oversight for those loans a few days after the law was signed into existence.
- ryandrake 3y agoWonder if they'd weigh in differently on PPP loan forgiveness. I have a feeling we'll be filing a lot of SCOTUS news stories in the next decade or so into the "tragic, but unsurprising" drawer. EDIT: Yes, bad example, given the replies. The fact that PPP was written into law as a deliberate wealth transfer is what's "tragic, but unsurprising" not what a theoretical SCOTUS opinion on it would be. I'm wrong. I guess if people were smart, they would have taken out a PPP loan to pay off their student loans!
- jonnycomputer 3y agoPPP forgiveness was pretty much there in Congress's law wasn't it? Didn't require stretching the bounds of executive authority to do it. Source: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/PPP%20--%20IFR%20--%20Paycheck%20Protection%20Program%20as%20Amended%20by%20Economic%20Aid%20Act%20%281.6.2021%29.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/PPP%20--%20I... Even if you grant that student loan forgiveness is a good thing, it is not necessarily the case that the ends justify the means.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kinghajj 3y agoDidn't the law that created the PPP program have explicit language to forgive the loans if certain conditions were met?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoFWIW, while I completely understand the argument, PPP loans are different animal. For one, they were designed from get to to be a massive giveway, which meant that they had 'forgiveness' clauses built in. Student loans explicitly do not. I am saying this as a 'loser' in this case. I am not suggesting I should be subsidized ( I will be fine, but I am not sure I am a common scenario ). I am saying that I am annoyed that we are throwing money at a lot, but when there is even a suggestion that not-well-to-do are helped, it is immediately thrown out. But you want to throw money at Ukraine? No problem. Money at farmers? No problem. Money at chips to reshore? No problem. Money at corps to relocate and fake build stuff? No problem. Remove some of the burden from students? Whoa whoa whoa.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoYes. This is Congress's fault. My strong guess is that Biden was reluctant to try this route, and may have figured if it worked, great, if it didn't, people would blame the conservatives on the court. But I blame Congress. They could have included such relief in their legislation.
- fzeroracer 3y agoKagan's dissent says everything that needs to be said. > That is why the Court is supposed to stick to its business—to decide only cases and controversies (but see supra, at 3–13), and to stay away from making this Nation’s policy about subjects like student-loan relief. The policy judgments, under our separation of powers, are supposed to come from Congress and the President. But they don’t when the Court refuses to respect the full scope of the delegations that Congress makes to the Executive Branch. When that happens, the Court becomes the arbiter—indeed, the maker—of national policy. See West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ (KAGAN, J., dis- senting) (slip op., at 32) (“The Court, rather than Congress, will decide how much regulation is too much”). That is no proper role for a court. And it is a danger to a democratic order.
- jadamson 3y agoIf Congress wants to give the President the power to forgive student loans, they will surely do so explicitly.
- oofta-boofta 3y ago[dead]
- cogman10 3y agoNot what Kagen was saying. The court is only supposed to decide things when someone has been injured. Who was injured in this case? The issue here is one of standing. The litigant had no standing, this case shouldn't have been heard by the supreme court. Or the hearing should have literally been "you have no standing". Now, if congress feels like Joe Biden stepped out of line, THEY could have sued him. That would have been the proper course of action. Here, the court has issued an advisory opinion, which is not it's role nor power. The court is out of line here.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoMissouri would have been injured because repayment of loans would provides them with income, which will now decrease. It seems fairly straightforward.
- monero-xmr 3y agoIf a single man can forgive $400 billion in loans with the stroke of a pen, why even have a congress?
- krger 3y agoCongress gave that single man the authority to do so.
- peepeepoopoo13 3y agoJudging by this ruling, evidently not.
- krger 3y agoA majority opinion doesn't change reality.
- tedunangst 3y agoSo the loans are going to be forgiven?
- krger 3y agoNo idea how it'll end up playing out. The reality I was referring to was the reality of Congress having delegated this authority to the Executive Branch. Read the dissent if you haven't.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe dissent doesn't make it reality.
- krger 3y agoThe dissent doesn't need to make it reality. The delegation of authority happened in 2003. It was broad. The delegated authority had been exercised before. The current Court is just hell-bent on dismantling the ability of the Executive Branch to regulate based on delegated authority.
- WoahNoun 3y agoThe Department of Education issued the loans. They should be able to decide if they want to collect them. The money has already been spent so the only "cost" is the opportunity cost of collecting. So it's not an appropriations issue.
- last_responder 3y ago"the money has already been spent " With the expectation that they will get it back. Its not like they bought 400 million dollars with of gummy bears and they are all gone anyway.
- treeman79 3y agoSo people not realize that the money has to come from somewhere? Colleges got the money and spent a little bit of it on educating students. If it’s not paid back then regular people need to have their tax money diverted from hopefully useful things to pay for this. Sure it’s great if every random government agency can spend unlimited money. Well at least until we become the next Venezuela.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoCongress directed the DoE to issue the loans. Do not try to usurp Congress's authority.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoThe executive branch has to carry out the laws that Congress passes. They don't get to do whatever they want. We live in (kind of) a democracy.
- roarcher 3y ago> The Department of Education issued the loans. They should be able to decide if they want to collect them. It's not the DoE's money, it's the taxpayers' money. No, the DoE should not be able to unilaterally decide that it is no longer accountable for it. There is a proper channel for that sort of decision, one which (in theory, at least) includes the input of the taxpayers. It's called Congress.
- Animats 3y agoThat was a stretch of executive authority. From the plain reading of the statute, loan forgiveness and modification was supposed to be for unusual and emergency situations. Payment postponement during the pandemic would probably have survived judicial scrutiny. But broad cancellation was overreach.
- legitster 3y agoMy tinfoil hat theory is that the administration is probably relieved right now. The implications of this were wild had it succeeded. This way they can have their cake and eat it too - they can say they tried and were stymied(!) by a crooked court, meanwhile they are not on the hook for adding half a trillion dollars into an already heavily inflationary economy.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoI suspect you are correct. And frankly, I think Congress should stop trying to dodge responsibility by letting the executive stretch its authority to take care of problems Congress won't.
- Sparkle-san 3y agoEvery textualist on the supreme court should have read section 2.a.1 and said "yup, that gives the executive branch the ability to do basically anything in regards to student loans during a state of emergency which we were in." Instead they invoked the Major Questions Doctrine which seems like a principle made out of whole cloth specifically for when textualism doesn't work the way they want it to.
- legitster 3y ago> 9 The dissent complains that our application of the major questions doctrine is a “tell” revealing that “ ‘normal’ statutory interpretation cannot sustain [our] decision.” Post, at 23, 30. Not so. As we have explained, the statutory text alone precludes the Secretary’s program. Today’s opinion simply reflects this Court’s familiar practice of providing multiple grounds to support its conclusions. See, e.g., Kucana v. Holder, 558 U. S. 233, 243–252 (2010) (interpreting the text of a federal immigration statute in the first instance, then citing the “presumption favoring judicial review of administrative action” as an additional sufficient basis for the Court’s decision). The fact that multiple grounds support a result is usually regarded as a strength, not a weakness.
- mydriasis 3y agoThis is a lot to read and I'm not very good at legalese... Anyone care to explain in layman's terms?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoCongress never directly authorized the president to forgive student loans. Biden was claiming that he had the power indirectly because of a law that says he can "modify" loans in times of "emergency" (this was used to pause repayment in 2020). But SCOTUS has ruled that fully forgiving them too far beyond merely "modifying". There is a principle called the "major questions doctrine" that any major action must be very explicitly authorized by Congress (i.e. Congress doesn't grant huge powers without saying so).
- mydriasis 3y agoInteresting -- is a "major action" defined legally as well?
- occamrazor 3y agoThe first three pages are a summary in relatively plain language.
- garciasn 3y agoThe SCOTUS feels that there should continue to be enforcement of the idea of separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The SCOTUS believes, in this very specific instance, that the executive should not have the power to forgive student loans and it should be left to, what I assume, is the legislative branch to deal with it instead.
- ZoomerCretin 3y agoThe Republican SCOTUS feels that it should have completed unchecked power to invalidate any laws or policies to which it is ideologically opposed. Its power has never been checked. It has only ever usurped and expanded its power, and only ever moderated under the threat of being packed. The constitution gives Congress the explicit power to set the jurisdiction of the supreme court, which to my knowledge, has never been used to restrict their power. The Republican supreme court believes all policy decisions should be left to the legislative branch, not because Congress cannot delegate authority, but because the filibuster completely guarantees that nothing can become law without a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, which in the current political environment means votes from several members of the hyper partisan Republican party. It's like all the celebration of George Washington relinquishing power after two terms. "Wow no one has done that before! So progressive!" But he was a property owner, in a country where only property owners could vote, and he knew that only property owners would hold any elected positions in the US government. He knew that the political interests of landowners would take precedence over all others, so why would he care who ran the country? This is the situation with our Congress. Nothing can pass without a supermajority in the Senate, requiring hyper partisan Republicans to give Democrats a win, which they will not do.
- jdlyga 3y agoThe margins on the opinion are gigantic. You could fit an entire second column of text into the width of those margins.
- quazar 3y agoThey are famous for the required specific printed document style which includes wide margins. When you argue before them you have to physically print everything you mention in full in this specific style. And this is per judge. Steve Letho on his podcast once said that for larger cases, the printing cost goes into hundreds of thousands of dollars which stuck in my memory.
- RandomBK 3y agoWhile I agree with the overall outcome of this case on congressional authority and moral hazard grounds, I must say I am quite concerned about the court's logic regarding standing in this specific case.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoStanding doctrine is stupid anyway. It feels like they invented it purely to get out of having to do some tricky decisions. We should greatly broaden standing far more than it is now.
- Sparkle-san 3y agoMajor questions doctrine is pretty stupid too given it feels like they invented it purely to get out of situations where textualism goes in the opposite direction that they want to rule.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoI think the idea is reasonable but it's true they mainly apply it when it's convenient. If you delegate authority, your agent shouldn't overstep the implicit role you have given them. For example if you hire a plumber to "fix your sink" and then you come back and he's replaced all your pipes and billed you $10,000 then you would be rightly angry that he didn't get approval for that additional work even if he says that it was part of fixing the sink.
- RandomBK 3y agoI think standing as a whole is a useful rule, but it needs to be disambiguated and more consistently enforced. The Court has always used standing as a convenient excuse to weasle out of difficult subjects.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoMuch as I agree that this was executive overreach, Trump did a ton of executive and legislating from the oval office, and the courts did not keep him in check. Classic example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13771 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13771 This should have been ruled unconstitutional, but they let him get away with it and tons of other garbage executive orders. The courts only care about executive overreach when democrats do it.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoI agree should have been; and agree that the Justices can be blind to their own contradictions, or that at times they start with the conclusion they want and seek a means to justify reaching it. Unfortunate. I tend to think that there are two justices who do that in particular most of all. That would be Alito and Thomas, who are, I believe, "movement judges". I haven't had enough time to evaluate the newest Democratic justices. Gorsuch has surprised on a few issues, for example. So has Kavaugnah in fact.
- WalterBright 3y agoAs I recall, quite a few of Trump's EOs were overturned by the courts.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThey did shut down some of his more blatant stuff, but he just spit out so many clearly absurd executive orders that even a genuine supreme court probably couldn't have kept up. But that's like his entire strategy: It's just a gish gallop
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThere was a lawsuit to stop that EO, which got rejected at Federal Court due to lack of standing. Those who filed the suit declined to appeal. The student loan thing got overturned by the Supreme Court - that is, it got upheld at the Federal Court level, same as EO 13771 did. The difference is that those appealing it kept fighting. So I'm not sure it's fair to blame the courts. Blame those fighting EO 13771 for deciding not to appeal. Or maybe they were right not to appeal, deciding that it was an unwinnable case, in which case it's still hard to blame the courts.
- GenericDev 3y ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 3y ago> At what point are people going to wake the fuck up and riot? For your sake I hope never.
- uejfiweun 3y agoThere's already been riots in 2020 and 2021. The thing is, the elite in this country are PHENOMENAL at playing the sides off against each other. They're terrified of a OWS redux and will stop at nothing to prevent it.
- jq-r 3y ago> At what point are people going to wake the fuck up and riot? Historically, when they start to get hungry. And (un)fortunately food availability will take a long while to become a problem in the modern times.
- Eumenes 3y agoIts such BS that you have to pay back a debt you agreed to! The horror, the fascism!
- mcphage 3y ago> Its such BS that you have to pay back a debt you agreed to! It's horrible enough that we invented "declaring bankruptcy", didn't we?
- tpmoney 3y agoAnd then managed to pass a law making discharging student debt in bankruptcy nearly impossible. Seems like if congress could pass that law, surely they could pass a “debt is now forgiven” law. And maybe stop writing new loans that are so burdensome.
- phone8675309 3y ago
- robotnikman 3y agoIf student loan forgiveness is to be done, they should also do something to prevent universities from charging ridiculous prices in the first place. The only reason they started doing so is because they know the government is willing to issue loans to pay for crazy high tuition costs. If loans are to be forgiven, steps have to be taken to prevent us from reaching this point again, or else history will just repeat itself in the future.
- legitster 3y agoPart of the reason this attempt to forgive student loan forgiveness was pretty far fetched to begin with (among many!) Is that their own Department of Education is still issuing student loans! At much higher interest rates than the ones being forgiven!
- wustangdan 3y agoYah. If students loans are so evil that they must all be forgiven, shouldn't we stop the creation of new student loans first? Plus its not like admission prices will just stay in place with such a massive demand shock.
- twiceaday 3y agoCompare loan forgiveness vs fixing new loans on how much voting power directly benefits.
- ZoomerCretin 3y agoHigh tuition rates are caused by the collapse in state funding for higher education. There is no correlation with loan availability. This has been debunked countless times. https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig... Historically, funding was tied to tuition caps. These had to be removed when states cut funding to have balanced budgets.
- 3y ago
- legitster 3y ago> It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary. Today, we have concluded that an instrumentality created by Missouri, governed by Missouri, and answerable to Missouri is indeed part of Missouri; that the words “waive or modify” do not mean “completely rewrite”; and that our precedent—old and new—requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy. We have employed the traditional tools of judicial decisionmaking in doing so. Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis—in fact, at least three do. > We do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement. It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country. The judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The Government’s application to vacate the Eighth Circuit’s injunction is denied as moot.
- justin66 3y agoThis is fair and I think I understand why Roberts wanted to write this, but the notion that the text of Kagan's dissent could move the public's opinion of the court at this moment in time is silly enough that it doesn't need to be discussed in an opinion. The court's problem isn't public "misperception," it's public perception.
- canyonero 3y agoDisappointed by the outcome, but not surprised. IMO SCOTUS is no longer trustworthy when it comes to impartiality. Polarization has infected every branch of government including SCOTUS. This judgement simply falls along US political party lines. Perhaps, it has never been the case. However, I think we have seen an increase of conservative policy and interpretations of law become the standard due to a Republican super majority.
- CWuestefeld 3y agoSo often it seems that people are upset about SCOTUS decisions, especially when it's to strike down an existing law, because they feel that what that struck law was doing was a good thing. It's not the Court's job to decide what is good policy and bad policy. The Court's job is to decide what's legal within the framework of the Constitution, the country's treaties, and other laws. It's quite possible that SCOTUS is striking down a law that was a really good law, and would have been really good policy. But the Court isn't supposed to be looking at that. They're supposed to be looking at our system of laws, and deciding based on that. To the extent that good policy is being struck down, you need to look to the Legislators (or in this case, the Executive) who are doing a bad job of fitting the policy into our system of laws. Or if that system of laws is the problem, then work on changing that system. Don't blame the Court when they're doing their job properly, noting that the rest of the government is violating our laws. These kinds of controls are important in the big picture.
- malfist 3y agoBig stretch to say the court was doing it's job properly here
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- krger 3y agoGo ahead and read the dissent if you think the Court was acting properly here.
- ZoomerCretin 3y agoThe Supreme Court manufacturered a "Major Questions" doctrine that's vague enough to apply to anything, but in practice only to policies that the Republican judge majority has ideological disagreements with. I encourage you to read the court's decision. It's partisanship packaged in ad hoc legal justification.
- CWuestefeld 3y agoSo are you admitting that the decision we're talking about here is a good one, and just lamenting that it isn't applied in certain other cases? Which are the cases where you believe it should have been applied? Or are you saying that the Major Questions doctrine is bad, and that so long as some addled brain can come up with the slightest chain of rationale to something in an otherwise-unrelated law, we should always open the floodgates? Because if legislating leads to such danger of misinterpretation, then I think we should all be praying for a whole lot more gridlock so that the Executive (whatever party he/she may be from) gets less rationale to do whatever the heck they want.
- calderarrow 3y agoI've been trying to understand the rationale of the court in simpler terms. Is this an adequate understanding of the reasoning: 1. Congress delegates some of its authority to issue/handle student loans to the executive branch via the US dept of education and some legislation passed in the past. 2. As President and leader of the executive branch, Biden wants to utilize the authority granted to him to modify the terms of the loans due to the impact of the COVID 19 national emergency. [0]. 3. As part of his loan modifications, he wants to forgive a certain portion of the loans altogether, for which he was sued. 4. The Supreme Court ruled that the modifications of the loan forgiveness were ultimately unconstitutional due to the major questions doctrine, implying that while Congress may have delegated some authority to the executive branch for managing loans, outright forgiveness on such a scale would be considered economically significant, and therefore would be presumed not to be delegated. [1]. Am I missing something? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden_v._Nebraska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden_v._Nebraska. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoYes. The Court has decided that "modify" does not mean "cancel entirely". (I also think it's questionable because we no longer have a "national emergency" anymore but they didn't really have to reach that aspect)
- hirundo 3y agoOn page 23: > As then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained: “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.” Press Conference, Office of the Speaker of the House (July 28, 2021).
- Simulacra 3y agohuh. Imagine that... I have read horrific statements in the congressional record by Joe Biden over the years opposing student loan forgiveness, gays, minority children, and criminal justice reform. It seems all politicians follow the same rule: Forget anything we have ever said or done, just agree and do what we say today.
- babl-yc 3y agoOne can find arguments one either side as to whether or not the HEROES act made $430 billion in debt forgiveness legal by the Secretary of Education, but I can't see how in any way this was _obviously_ legal. https://www.congress.gov/108/plaws/publ76/PLAW-108publ76.pdf https://www.congress.gov/108/plaws/publ76/PLAW-108publ76.pdf Biden made debt forgiveness part of his campaign strategy knowing it would be a difficult legal road, and he deserves some of the criticism for creating the expectation that debt would be erased at the risk of them being let down in the future.
- jhallenworld 3y agoThe point I like to make about student loans: The USA gets to print a great deal of money and run huge deficits without incurring much inflation (even taking into account the recent inflation event). Why? Dollars are the world's reserve currency. Why? Demand for dollars is high, partially because oil is priced in dollars (petro-dollar recycling). Why? Well Iraq tried to change this, look what happened to them.. you get the idea, it's partially a consequence of history and our huge military helps. So then it comes down to who gets this extra money. In petro-dollar recycling, much of it goes to defense contractors. I think it's entirely valid to have a discussion on the equitable distribution of this money and arguments that we can not afford loan forgiveness are total BS. The reason the money goes to the rich is because they own congress. It's in their vested interest to keep the price of labor low- one way to do this is to get people deep into dept as soon as possible.
- tracker1 3y agoThe BRICS countries are trying to change that, and they are gaining some momentum in terms of negotiation using China's Yuan becoming an alternative baseline currency. This will likely shake things up quite a bit. So I don't think it will stay USD in terms of lower economic impact from printing more money. I think it will get really bad within the next decade or so. We're rapidly approaching a point where we won't be able to print our way out, or cut spending enough to get out of it at all.
- bamfly 3y agoWhat would you expect to see happening, in a developed country that doesn't have the benefit of debt denominated in USD and of control over USD, if they had an even worse debt:GDP ratio than the US does? I ask because there are a few such countries, and they seem to be doing OK. They shouldn't be, if this is something that'll definitely cause serious problems for the US—right? It should already be "really bad" for those countries, I'd think.
- tracker1 3y agoEverything is fine until you realize that the money is just ink on paper, so to speak, with nothing behind it. The strength of the US economy and position in global markets has been what's kept things strong. I don't know that it will hold, and have no idea when banking institutions won't be able to prop up peoples faith in said system anymore. I'm not sure if I expect market collapse or WW3 to happen first... right now, feels like a crap shoot in either direction.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoBiden had 2 years with control of Congress. He should have gone through normal channels and passed this. He already spent $X trillions on random "infrastructure" bills, surely he could have included student loan forgiveness in there if he really thought it was important. This feels like a clear political move by him to get credit for something that he never could have passed anyway.
- Simulacra 3y ago..Like the billions sent to Ukraine. Choices were made and the administration has to live with the consequences.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoAfter listening to the oral arguments , it'll be interesting to see how the court Justified this. In general I agree with the current quartz decisions and personally opposed that forgiveness, but this case seems like it was an uphill battle for those against forgiveness. Congress appeared to give stupidly Broad powers to the executive in the pandemic Heroes Act. Of course it seems like a stretch to consider someone who got student debt 20 years ago and is making good money a hero of the pandemic deserving relief, but it seemed to be allowed in the order
- brigadier132 3y agoStudent loan forgiveness without ending the broken system that is student loans entirely is an extremely cynical, and in my opinion, evil move. It's just a way to continually buy votes using taxpayer money because the next generation that is indebted will vote for the group that will pay off their loans and give them money.