Supreme Court arguments Tuesday over President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness efforts revealed multiple reasons that those efforts should prevail, but there’s little reason to think they will at the Republican-controlled court.
First, there’s the issue of “standing,” the legal term for having the right to sue. Basically, you need to have an actual interest in a case to bring a lawsuit. It’s a conservative idea, broadly speaking, that can be used to shut the courthouse door to claims.
But Tuesday’s arguments showed the absurdity of the legal challenge from Republican-controlled states, including Missouri, which pressed a standing argument based on the relief program’s impact on the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority. Though that sounds like something that could make sense, the loan authority is an independent entity that could’ve brought its own suit but didn’t.
As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out in arguments, using the loan authority’s acronym: “If MOHELA is being injured as a result of the plan, or at least if that’s the allegation, MOHELA has the ability to defend itself and its interests.” The court would be “breaking new ground” if the justices found standing on that basis, Jackson said.
Of course, it’s not surprising that Democratic-appointed justices pressed the standing issue. But they didn’t have much company. NBC News’ Lawrence Hurley reported: “Of the six conservative justices, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly probed whether challengers had legal standing.”
Other conservatives’ lack of focus on standing, coupled with what they did focus on, is reason to concern the Biden administration. Something they did focus on? The “major questions” doctrine. If you’re wondering what the “major questions” doctrine is, it’s a theory that the court made up but could wind up deciding the case against Biden. If you’re wondering what the “major questions” doctrine is, it’s a theory that the court made up but could wind up deciding the case against Biden. The court uses it to strike down significant administrative action that it thinks Congress hasn’t clearly allowed. The “doctrine” appeared for the first time in a 6-3 majority opinion last term, in a case against the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s all to say that in the forthcoming student debt opinion, which is expected by late June, don’t be surprised if the majority sidesteps obvious standing problems and then, on the merits of the issue, rules that the administration overreached, based on the made-up “major questions” doctrine.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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