Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion striking down the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan ended with a note taking aim at the court’s liberal justices in defending the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.
Justice Elena Kagan authored the liberal justices dissent in the court’s final opinion of the term, delivering a blistering rebuttal to the court striking down the student debt plan, not only disagreeing on the merits of the case but also that the challengers had authority to sue in the first place.
“In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance,” Kagan wrote.
Roberts, in response, took issue with Kagan’s take.
“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,” Roberts wrote.
The decision marked the final opinion of the court’s annual term, a year that followed the high court striking down constitutional abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade last June.
Public approval of the court plummeted in the wake of the abortion decision, which was first revealed in an extraordinary leak of the draft majority opinion. In the year since, the court has also faced several ethics scandals involving the justices, leading Democrats to push for an outside intervention to require the court to adopt a binding code of ethics.
Kagan’s dissent was joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan read portions of her dissent aloud from the bench, a rare occurrence that signals the significance of the justices’ disagreement.
“Reasonable minds may disagree with our analysis—in fact, at least three do,” Roberts wrote in his student debt decision, referencing the dissent.
“We do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement,” he continued. “It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country.”
Kagan, who has a reputation for consensus building on the high court, had warned on several occasions after the abortion decision that the court was risking its legitimacy.
“So in a case not a case, the majority overrides the combined judgment of the Legislative and Executive Branches, with the consequence of eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans,” she wrote in the student debt case.