Biden v. Nebraska
 | |
| Biden v. Nebraska | |
| Term: 2022 | |
| Important Dates | |
| Argued: February 28, 2023 Decided: June 30, 2023 | |
| Outcome | |
| United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded | |
| Vote | |
| 6-3 | |
| Majority | |
| Chief Justice John Roberts • Clarence Thomas • Samuel Alito • Neil Gorsuch • Brett Kavanaugh | |
| Concurring | |
| Amy Coney Barrett | |
| Dissenting | |
| Elena Kagan • Sonia Sotomayor • Ketanji Brown Jackson | |
Biden v. Nebraska was a U.S. Supreme Court case decided on June 30, 2023, in which the Supreme Court held that the HEROES Act did not authorize the secretary of education to establish the student debt cancellation plan. The case concerned whether the U.S. Department of Education had the authority to cancel up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower under the national emergency provisions of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act).[1]
The case was argued before the Supreme Court on February 28, 2023, during the court's October 2022-2023 term.
The case came on a writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. To review the lower court's opinion, click here.
Why it matters: The court’s decision in the case held that the secretary of education exceeded statutory authority by establishing the student debt cancellation plan under the HEROES Act. The case also ruled that the states had standing to challenge the federal policy because the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) is an instrumentality of Missouri and harms against MOHELA would also harm the state.
Timeline
The following timeline details key events in this case:
- June 30, 2023: The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
- February 28, 2023: The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument.
- December 1, 2022: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
- November 18, 2022: The Biden administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- November 14, 2022: The United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit granted the emergency injunction, putting the student loan debt relief program on hold, pending appeal.[3]
Background
President Joe Biden (D) announced the student loan debt cancellation program on August 24, 2022. The plan would cancel a maximum of $20,000 in federal student loans for qualifying borrowers. The Biden administration based the program on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003, which allows the U.S. government to change student loan programs in response to national emergencies, such as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The program went into effect on October 23, 2022.[4]
Nebraska and six other states challenged the program in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. They claimed that the program violates the separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), on the basis that it exceeded the secretary of education's authority under the HEROES Act and was arbitrary and capricious pursuant to the APA. Judge Henry Autrey dismissed the case, holding that the states don't have standing to sue. On appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, a three-judge panel put the program on hold. In response, the Biden administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court granted review and expedited oral arguments for the February 2023 argument sitting.[3][4]
The court also heard arguments in the related case Department of Education v. Brown. Click here to learn more about that case.
Questions presented
The petitioner presented the following questions to the court:[2]
Questions presented:
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Oral argument
The court heard oral argument on February 28, 2023.
While “the court’s liberal justices were dubious about the states’ right to sue,” according to SCOTUSblog analyst Amy Howe, “the court’s conservative justices appeared just as skeptical about whether the Biden administration could rely on the HEROES Act to adopt the loan-forgiveness program.” Howe further observed that “a majority of the justices appeared unconvinced that Congress intended to give the secretary of education the power to adopt the program,” adding that “[s]ome of the conservative justices also suggested that the loan-forgiveness program might fail under the ‘major questions doctrine.’”[6]
Audio
Audio of oral argument:[7]
Transcript
Transcript of oral argument:[8]
Outcome
The court ruled 6-3 that the HEROES Act did not authorize the secretary of education to enact the student debt cancellation plan. It reversed and remanded the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruling.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a concurring opinion. Justice Elena Kagan delivered a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.[1]
Opinion
Opinion of the court
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, which argued that the states had Article III standing to sue the Biden administration for harms they would face from the student debt cancellation plan. Roberts wrote that the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) is an instrumentality of the state and therefore harms to the MOHELA would also harm the state:[9]
| “ | By law and function, MOHELA is an instrumentality of Missouri: It was created by the State to further a public purpose, is governed by state officials and state appointees, reports to the State, and may be dissolved by the State. The Secretary’s plan will cut MOHELA’s revenues, impairing its efforts to aid Missouri college students. This acknowledged harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself.[9][5] | ” |
Roberts also argued that the HEROES Act authorized the secretary of education to waive or modify student loan provisions but did not authorize the cancellation of student debt:[9]
| “ | The Secretary’s comprehensive debt cancellation plan cannot fairly be called a waiver—it not only nullifies existing provisions, but augments and expands them dramatically. It cannot be mere modification, because it constitutes ‘effectively the introduction of a whole new regime.’ MCI, 512 U. S., at 234. And it cannot be some combination of the two, because when the Secretary seeks to add to existing law, the fact that he has ‘waived’ certain provisions does not give him a free pass to avoid the limits inherent in the power to ‘modify.’ However broad the meaning of ‘waive or modify,’ that language cannot authorize the kind of exhaustive rewriting of the statute that has taken place here.[9][5] | ” |
Concurring opinion
- See also: Major questions doctrine
Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a concurring opinion, joining the majority opinion in full. She argued that the major questions doctrine reinforced the conclusion reached by the majority but that the doctrine was not necessary to reach the conclusion:[9]
| “ | The major questions doctrine has an important role to play when courts review agency action of ‘vast ‘economic and political significance.’’ Utility Air, 573 U. S., at 324. But the doctrine should not be taken for more than it is— the familiar principle that we do not interpret a statute for all it is worth when a reasonable person would not read it that way.[9][5] | ” |
Dissenting opinion
Justice Elena Kagan delivered a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that the plaintiffs did not have standing in the case because they did not have any personal stake in the student debt cancellation plan:[9]
| “ | Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce ‘fundamental limits on federal judicial power.’ Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984). They keep courts acting like courts. Or stated the other way around, they prevent courts from acting like this Court does today. The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. They are classic ideological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs. In giving those States a forum—in adjudicating their complaint— the Court forgets its proper role. The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies.[9][5] | ” |
Kagan continued by arguing that the HEROES Act authorized the secretary of education to establish the student debt cancellation plan because it authorized the waiver or modification of student loan provisions in the face of a national emergency:[9]
| “ | The statute provides the Secretary with broad authority to give emergency relief to student-loan borrowers, including by altering usual discharge rules. What the Secretary did fits comfortably within that delegation. But the Court forbids him to proceed. As in other cases, the rules of the game change when Congress enacts broad delegations allowing agencies to take substantial regulatory measures.[9][5] | ” |
Text of the opinion
Read the full opinion here.
Commentary about the case
Pre-decision commentary
Michael Pierce, the director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, argued that the Supreme Court seemed poised to rule in favor of the student debt cancellation program following oral arguments. He said, “There is a real fighting chance that student loan borrowers walk out of the supreme court with debt relief. I think that the obituary for the student debt relief program was written too soon, but there’s a path forward here even if this is a loss, and that’s what makes me hopeful at the end of the day. People are going to get the debt relief they were promised,” according to The Guardian.[10]
Eleni Schirmer and Louise Seamster published an opinion piece in The New York Times arguing that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing: “The case before the Supreme Court has already attracted criticism — even from conservative legal experts who have no love for the Biden administration’s policy. Through tortured logic, the State of Missouri has declared itself the injured party even though it’s the loan servicing company, a separate entity, that would lose revenue. Missouri claimed it would be a secondary victim, since the loan authority owes the state $105 million.”[11]
Dan Urman, the director of the Law and Policy Minor at Northeastern University argued in a statement that the HEROES Act was an efficient method for approaching student loan debt cancellation. Urman said, “One of the reasons why the Biden administration relied on the HEROES Act was it was pretty quick and did not require what is called notice and comment rulemaking, which is a boring way of saying, ‘taking input before the affected parties before making a decision,’” according to Northeastern Global News.[12]
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who joined a group of Republican legislators in filing an amicus brief regarding the case, argued, “President Biden has unilaterally used his national COVID emergency to justify student loan bailouts. His plan bypasses Congress’s comprehensive plan for student borrowers in the Higher Education Act of 1965 and clearly violates basic principles of executive power under Article II of the Constitution. My colleagues and I urge the Court to preserve the constitutional separation of powers and stop this partisan handout on the taxpayer’s dime.”[13]
Post-decision commentary
Smita Ghosh, appellate counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, issued a press release arguing that SCOTUS did not appropriately consider the text of the HEROES Act. Ghosh argued, “Although the Court claimed to rely on the text of the HEROES Act, a law giving the Education Department the power to waive student loan rules in the face of national emergencies, the purportedly textualist Court ignored the breadth of the language Congress used in the HEROES Act, which makes clear that education officials can take broad actions relating to student loans in the face of unforeseen circumstances … The Court’s majority also focused on the unprecedented nature of the debt relief plan—an approach that disregards the unprecedented nature of the pandemic itself.”[14]
Democracy Forward, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit “founded to address generational-defining threats to American democracy,” according to their website, issued a press release following the decision arguing that the HEROES Act authorized the Biden administration's student loan debt cancellation plan.[15] The press release stated, “The decision runs counter to two dozen of the nation’s leading legal scholars and an architect of the HEROES Act who submitted briefs to the Court explaining that the President’s debt relief plan was necessary, lawful, and appropriate. This decision is a loss for democracy, the separation of powers, and the ability of Congress to empower federal agencies to take appropriate actions that benefit the American people in times of crisis.”[16]
Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) issued a statement following the decision arguing that the SCOTUS decision allows Congress to address the issue of student loan debt cancellation. He stated, “The question of student loan burden is now back to where it belongs—Congress. Our elected federal representatives are closest to the people, have the power of the purse, and are entrusted with the responsibility of tackling difficult policy issues.”[17]
Thomas Berry, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, agreed with SCOTUS' decision that the HEROES Act did not authorize the student loan debt cancellation plan. Berry argued, “The Court’s decision today is a victory for the separation of powers and the rule of law. The Court correctly held that the power to ‘waive or modify’ a provision of law is not a power to draft an entirely new law. The Biden Administration attempted to use the ‘waive or modify’ authority in the HEROES Act to create a new $430 billion debt‐cancellation program, but creating a program of such breadth and scope is a job for Congress, not the executive branch.”[18]
Impact
The decision in Biden v. Nebraska ruled that the secretary of education exceeded statutory authority by establishing the student debt cancellation plan under the HEROES Act. The decision overturned the Biden administration’s efforts to cancel student loans.
Aftermath
The SCOTUS decision in Biden v. Nebraska overturned the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student loans under the HEROES Act, which included an October 12, 2022 final rule in the Federal Register titled “Federal Student Aid Programs (Federal Perkins Loan Program, Federal Family Education Loan Program, and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program)” that modified student loan provisions under the HEROES Act.[19] Congress passed a Congressional Review Act resolution aiming to block the rule on June 1, 2023, but President Joe Biden (D) vetoed the resolution on June 7, 2023.[20]
Following the Biden v. Nebraska decision on June 30, 2023, President Biden held a press conference in which he shared the next steps the administration planned to take in an effort to cancel student loans. The plan included efforts to establish a student loan cancellation plan under the Higher Education Act through the rulemaking process. The Department of Education also announced the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan and a 12-month on-ramp to repayment, effective October 1, 2023.[21]
Related cases
October term 2022-2023
The Supreme Court began hearing cases for the term on October 3, 2022. The court's yearly term begins on the first Monday in October and lasts until the first Monday in October the following year. The court generally releases the majority of its decisions in mid-June.[22]
See also
External links
- Search Google News for this topic
- U.S. Supreme Court docket file - Biden v. Nebraska (petitions, motions, briefs, opinions, and attorneys)
- SCOTUSblog case file for Biden v. Nebraska
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 SCOTUSblog, "Biden v. Nebraska," accessed June 30, 2023
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 U.S. Supreme Court, "22-506 BIDEN V. NEBRASKA QUESTIONS PRESENTED," CERT. GRANTED December 1, 2022
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, Nebraska v. Biden, November 14, 2022
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 SCOTUSblog, "Court will review legality of Biden’s student-debt relief, but plan remains on hold for now," December 1, 2022
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ SCOTUSblog, "Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan gets cold reception from conservative justices," February 28, 2023
- ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, "Oral Argument - Audio," argued February 28, 2023
- ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, "Oral Argument - Transcript," argued February 28, 2023
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 Justia, "Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. _ (2023)," accessed June 30, 2023
- ↑ The Guardian, "What's happening with US student loan relief and the payment pause?" June 10, 2023
- ↑ The New York Times, "The Case Against Student Debt Relief Barely Even Pretends to Make Sense," May 26, 2023
- ↑ Northeastern Global News, "The Supreme Court will decide these major cases in the coming days. Here are the likely outcomes, according to our experts," June 13, 2023
- ↑ Marsha Blackburn, "Blackburn Pushes Back On Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan In Amicus Brief To Supreme Court," February 3, 2023
- ↑ Constitutional Accountability Center, "RELEASE: In Striking Down the Biden Administration Student Debt Relief Plan, the Supreme Court's Conservative Supermajority Substitutes Its Policy Judgement for that of Congress," June 30, 2023
- ↑ Democracy Forward, "Our Mission," accessed July 3, 2023
- ↑ Democracy Forward, "Statement on the Supreme Court's Decision in Biden v. Nebraska," June 30, 2023
- ↑ Mike Hilgers Nebraska Attorney General, "Attorney General Hilgers' Statement Regarding Biden v. Nebraska," June 30, 2023
- ↑ Cato Institute, "Cato Scholars React to Supreme Court Student Loan Decision," June 30, 2023
- ↑ Federal Register, "Federal Student Aid Programs (Federal Perkins Loan Program, Federal Family Education Loan Program, and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program)," October 12, 2022
- ↑ Congress.gov, "H.J.Res.45 - Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of the title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to 'Waivers and Modifications of Federal Student Loans,'" accessed July 3, 2023
- ↑ The White House, "FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces New Actions to Provide Debt Relief and Support for Student Loan Borrowers," June 30, 2023
- ↑ SupremeCourt.gov, "The Supreme Court at Work: The Term and Caseload," accessed January 24, 2022
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