WASHINGTON (AP) – Conservative justices hold a majority on the Supreme Court seems ready to sink President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe out or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans.
In arguments that lasted more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative colleagues in questioning the administration’s authority to broadly cancel federal student loans because of the COVID-19 emergency. .
Loan payments that have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic three years ago should resume before this summer. Without the loan relief promised in Biden’s plan, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer said, “delinquencies and defaults will increase.”
The plan has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges in the lower courts. It doesn’t look any better than the six judges appointed by Republican presidents.
Biden’s only hope of being allowed to advance appears to be a slim possibility, based on the arguments, that the court will find that Republican-led states and individuals challenging the plan do not have legal standing to sue. .
That would allow the court to dismiss cases at a threshold stage, without a decision on the basic idea of the loan forgiveness program that appeared to trouble the judges on the right side of the court.
Roberts was one of the judges who grilled Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and suggested the administration overstepped its authority.
Three times, the chief justice said the program would cost half a trillion dollars, pointing to the broad impact and huge cost as reasons the administration should get clear authorization from Congress. The program, which the administration says is based on a 2003 law enacted in response to the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. estimated to cost $400 billion over 30 years.
“If you’re talking about it in the abstract, I think most casual observers would say if you give that much … money, if you’re going to affect the obligations of a lot of Americans on a subject. That’s a big controversy.” , they’re going to think it’s something Congress should do,” Roberts said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he agreed, saying it “seems problematic” for the administration to use an “old law” to unilaterally implement a debt relief program that Congress has rejected.
No justice seems to have shaken Prelogar’s explanation that the administration cited the national emergency created by the pandemic as authority for the debt relief program under a law commonly known as the HEROES Act.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the history of the court are delays in executive emergency power declarations,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the best moments in court history have pushed back against the president’s assertions of emergency powers.”
At another point, however, Kavanaugh suggested that the program would have a stronger legal footing than other pandemic-related programs that were ended by the court’s conservative majority, including a moratorium on evictions. and a requirement for vaccines or regular testing in large workplaces.
Those earlier court-stopped programs were largely billed as public health measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. The loan forgiveness plan, in contrast, is aimed at countering the economic effects of the pandemic.
Prelogar and some of the liberal justices tried several times to turn the arguments back to the people who would benefit from the program. The administration said 26 million people applied to have up to $20,000 in federal student loans forgiven under the plan.
“The states are asking this court to deny this essential relief to millions of Americans,” he said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her fellow justices would be wrong if they took for themselves, instead of leaving it to education experts, “the right to decide how much help to give” to people who are struggling if the program fail.
“Their financial situation will get worse because if you default, it will be more difficult for you. You will not get credit. You pay a higher price for things,” said Sotomayor.
But Roberts points to apparent favoritism.
He offers a hypothetical example of someone who passed out of college to start a lawn service with borrowed money. “Nobody is telling the guy who’s trying to build a lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his mortgage,” Roberts said.
Republican-led states and lawmakers in Congress, as well as conservative legal interests, lined up against the plan as a violation of Biden’s executive authority. Democratic-led states and liberal interest groups are supporting the administration in urging the court to allow the plan to go ahead.
The justices’ questions mirrored the partisan political divide on the issue, with conservatives arguing that non-college workers should not be penalized and liberals arguing for a break for the college-educated.
Speaking on the eve of the arguments, Biden said, “I am confident that the legal authority to carry out that plan is there.”
The president, who has previously questioned his own authority over broad student loan cancellations, first announced the program in August. Legal challenges quickly followed.
The administration says the HEROES Act allows the secretary of education to waive or modify the terms of federal student loans in connection with a national emergency. The law is primarily intended to keep service members from hurting financially while they fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Nebraska and other plaintiff states say the 20 million borrowers who will have their entire loans wiped out will get a “windfall” that will leave them better off than before the pandemic.
“This is the creation of a new program, far beyond what Congress intended,” Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell said in court Tuesday.
The national emergency is expected to end on May 11, but the administration says the economic consequences will continue, despite historically low unemployment and other signs of economic strength.
In addition to the debate over the authority to forgive student loans, the court faced whether the states and two individuals whose challenge is also before the judges have the legal right, or standing, to sue.
Parties generally must show that they will suffer financial harm in order to have standing in cases like this. A federal judge initially found the states harmless and dismissed their lawsuit before an appeals panel said the case could go forward..
Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined three liberal justices in repeatedly questioning Nebraska’s Campbell on the issue. But at least one more conservative vote is needed to form a majority.
Of the two individuals suing in Texas, one has student loans held commercially and one is eligible for $10,000 in loan payments, not the $20,000 maximum. They get nothing if they win their case.
Among those in court Tuesday was Kayla Smith, a recent University of Georgia graduate, who camped near the courthouse the night before to secure a seat. Biden’s plan would raise a burden for his mother, who borrowed more than $20,000 in federal student loans to help Smith attend college.
“It seems a little chaotic that college is the expectation, higher education is the expectation, but at the same time, people’s lives are ruined,” said Smith, 22, who lives in Atlanta.
The arguments are available on the AP YouTube channel or on the court’s website.
A decision is expected in late June.
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Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.