Last week, the Supreme Court issued three important decisions that will impact public policymaking for decades.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of race in college admissions is a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, dealing a major blow to affirmative action in education.
On Friday, the Supreme Court determined in a 6-3 decision that states cannot force workers to promote messages that violate their religious beliefs, a significant victory for those who support religious liberty.
President Biden responds to the Supreme Court’s decision on the administration’s student debt program at the White House on Friday, June 30, 2023. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
But it was the high court’s decision on Friday to strike down President Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt that could prove to be the most important – but perhaps not for the reason you think.
For the first time since the law was passed, the Biden administration attempted to use the power to “waive or modify” to cancel massive amounts of student loan debt. In the past, it had only been utilized in very limited circumstances, such as waiving a provision that required students to provide a written request for a leave of absence.
The impact of Biden’s student debt cancellation plan would have been massive. As the Supreme Court noted in its decision, “The Department of Education estimates that the program will cover 98.5% of all borrowers,” at a cost of $430 billion.
And the potential effect it would have had on future debt cancellation plans and student behavior could have been even greater. If Biden were permitted to eliminate $430 billion in student debt overnight, what would stop him or a future presidential administration from “canceling” even more student loan debt?
The primary legal battle in Biden v. Nebraska was not about student loan debt, but rather the authority of the executive branch to use vague wording in laws to enact sweeping reforms without the need for congressional action.
The Biden administration attempted to argue, as the Obama administration and other liberal governments had in the past, that broad legislative language could be used to do just about anything the federal government wants.
So, when the Heroes Act gave the Department of Education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the [Education Act],” it meant, according to the White House’s interpretation, Biden could create gigantic, costly debt cancellation programs that were never imagined by anyone in Congress who voted for the Heroes Act two decades ago.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “the words ‘waive or modify’ do not mean ‘completely rewrite,’” and “this is a case about one branch of government arrogating to itself power belonging to another.… it is the Executive seizing the power of the Legislature.”
Roberts is exactly right. There is absolutely no evidence that the Republican-led Congress and Republican president who passed the Heroes Act in 2003 intended to give a future president the power to cancel student loan debt on a massive scale. And no honest, reasonable person would ever think that “modify” means “rewrite the law as you see fit, no matter the cost.”
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