The conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seem likely to sink President Biden's plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans.
In arguments lasting 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.It was not clear that any of the six justices appointed by Republican presidents would approve of the debt relief program, although Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett appeared most open to the administration's arguments.
Roberts was among the justices who grilled the Biden administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, Elizabeth Prelogar, and suggested that the administration had exceeded its authority with the program. 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 administration says a 2003 law, commonly known as 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 was primarily intended to keep service members from becoming worse off financially while they fought in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dozens of borrowers came from across the country to camp out near the court on a soggy Monday evening in hopes of getting a seat for the arguments. Among them was Sinyetta Hill, who said that Biden's plan would erase all but about $500 of the $20,000 or so she has in student loans.
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