President Biden is scheduled to deliver an address Friday afternoon responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his student-loan-forgiveness order and announcing new plans to help soften the impact for borrowers.
“While we strongly disagree with the court, we prepared for this scenario,” a source close to the Biden administration told Reuters. “The president will make clear he’s not done fighting yet, and will announce new actions to protect student loan borrowers,” the anonymous source added.
The Supreme Court found that the statute Biden relied upon when issuing the loan forgiveness executive order did not give the secretary of education the authority to forgive billions in student loans for tens of millions of Americans.
The Court’s precedent “requires that Congress speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority.
“The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not,” Roberts went on to write. “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.”
Over 45 million people across the United States owe nearly $1.6 trillion in federal educational loans making it one of the most expensive executive actions in American history.
The landmark decision was denounced by leading Democrats. “The same Supreme Court that overturned Roe now refuses to follow the plain language of the law on student loan cancellation. This fight is not over. The President has more tools to cancel student debt — and he must use them,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) tweeted following the announcement.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) even insinuated that Justice Samuel Alito’s opposition to debt-forgiveness stems from corruption. “Justice Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness. After the gifts, Alito voted to overturn. This SCOTUS’ corruption undercuts its own legitimacy by putting its rulings up for sale,” the progressive Democrat wrote.
Across the aisle, Republicans rejoiced.
Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) applauded the news: “Today, SCOTUS made the right decision on student loans. Biden wanted to make waitresses & mechanics pay the student loans of doctors & lawyers who make six figures. If you take out a loan, you pay it back,” the 2024 presidential contender wrote on Twitter.
The sentiment was echoed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). “BREAKING —> President Biden’s student loan giveaway is ruled UNLAWFUL. The 87% of Americans without student loans are no longer forced to pay for the 13% who do. This builds on the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s end to the payment pause. The President must follow the law.”
In his opinion, Roberts cited a statement made by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who in 2021 insisted that President Biden could not exercise executive authority in the name of “debt forgiveness,” to bolster the majority opinion.
“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,” the California Democrat said during a press conference in July 2021.
Meanwhile, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the Supreme Court had dramatically overstepped in its ruling. “In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance.”
“From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint. At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent,” Kagan added in her concluding remarks.
She was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson.