In Student Loan Decision, Supreme Court Affirms President’s Power Has LimitsJul 10, 2023 5 min read COMMENTARY BY Jack Fitzhenry Legal Fellow, Meese Center Jack is a Legal Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Jack Fitzhenry
July 10, 2023
Can limits be found even to an emergency? Can the Constitution’s tripartite division of federal powers withstand the blows and novel respiratory viruses that history lobs at us from time to time? Can they withstand the enterprising legal justifications of an administration that lacks the support of Congress?
Mercifully, the Supreme Court answered “yes” to all the above when it said “no” to the Biden administration’s bid to cancel over $40 billion in federal student loan debt in the waning hours of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Friday, in Biden v. Nebraska, the court held that the administration lacked authority to unilaterally erase millions of student loans.
In August 2022, more than two years after the novel coronavirus sent us all scurrying for cover, President Joe Biden announced that he and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona would address the effects of the pandemic by invoking a little-known statute, the HEROES Act, to cancel the federal student debt of certain deserving borrowers. As it turned out, over 40 million borrowers qualified at an aggregate price of $430 billion all under the auspices of a statute meant primarily to ease burdens on active-duty soldiers.
