Conservative justices in the Supreme Court's majority are asking skeptical questions about President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans
Several conservative justices spent time grilling the Biden administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, Elizabeth Prelogar, and suggested that the administration had exceeded its authority with the program.
Roberts’ fellow conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, suggested that the administration was using an “old law” to unilaterally implement a debt relief program that Congress had rejected. He said the situation was familiar:"In the wake of Congress not authorizing the action, the executive nonetheless doing a massive new program.”Kavanaugh noted that the administration was citing the national emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic as authority for the debt relief program.
The president, who once doubted his own authority to broadly cancel student debt, first announced the program in August.Republican-led states and lawmakers in Congress, as well as conservative legal interests, are lined up against the plan as a clear violation of Biden's executive authority. Democratic-led states and liberal interest groups are backing the Democratic administration in urging the court to allow the plan to take effect.
Nebraska and other states that sued say the plan is not necessary to keep the rate of defaults roughly where it was before the pandemic. The 20 million borrowers who have their entire loans erased would get a “windfall” that will leave them better off than they were before the pandemic, the states say.
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