The Supreme Court says no

This SCOTUS term has set down a number of momentous decisions that will reverberate for some time and require some significant time to digest and unpack. Among the more notable judgments is the court’s 6-3 decision that President Biden’s attempts to unilaterally forgive upwards of $400 billion of student loan debt are invalid and unconstitutional. This is a huge setback for the Biden Administration and a clear indictment of executive branch overreach.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts dismissed the administration’s argument that it had authorization to dismiss student loans under the HEROES Act of 2003. “The HEROES Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act,” concluded the majority, “but does not allow the Secretary to rewrite that statute to the extent of canceling $430 billion of student loan principal.” The question in large part turned on the judgment of the court whether Congress had authorized the executive branch to take such broad action. The majority of the court judged that it had not and thus found against the Administration’s attempts to cancel the student loan debt to exceed its mandate: “The text of the HEROES Act does not authorize the Secretary’s loan forgiveness program.”

There are a number of salutary features of this decision. One is that it continues a trend in recent SCOTUS decisions that focuses on the details and precise meaning of the texts at issue and makes judgments on the basis of these readings rather than engaging in tortuous reasoning and readings to arrive at an outcome that had already been deemed to be salutary. The more that American courts, and the Supreme Court most of all, bind themselves to straightforward, common-sense, and originalist readings of texts, statutes, and constitutions, the better off everyone will be under a consistent rule of law.

Also significant is that the court has again played referee between the branches of government, reigning in an overactive and overreaching executive and thereby underlining the authority of Congress. This division of powers is part of the original genius of the American constitutional order. But recent presidential administrations have seized on a lazy legislative branch to act with greater and greater presumption. The original dynamic between these two branches, with Congress writing the laws and holding the power of the purse and the executive branch tasked with administering these decisions, has more and more turned into a dysfunctional legislative branch giving broad and undefined mandates to the executive. This leaves the agencies and departments of the executive branch with wide power to write the details of regulations (most often in collaboration with powerful institutions in the industries that they are supposed to be regulating) and to make sweeping orders and judgments on their own.

An inactive legislative branch and an activist executive is a recipe for tyranny. Thankfully the wisdom of the Founders provided checks on such corruption, one of which is the role of the judicial branch to determine when the roles of various governmental institutions have been usurped. The majority used the “major questions doctrine” in its analysis of this case, a standard that requires explicit and clear authorization for executive action in areas of great political, economic, and social significance.

All of this bodes well for the health of our nation even if the news comes as a disappointment to many borrowers who were hoping for relief. In some ways this decision actually helps borrowers because it indicates a clear path for debt relief to be pursued legally: through direct Congressional action. What President Biden promised and tried to deliver in this debt cancellation plan was beyond his purview to decide or his power to implement. But Congress could decide to give him or a future president that power.

In this way the debate over the prudence and morality of broad debt cancellation is returned to where it should be in a democratic republic—to the political process and in the realm of legislative action. As a nation we are all better off when our representatives in the legislature work towards passing laws that respond to the interests of the citizenry rather than political action being pursued primarily through the “phone and a pen” approach of executive orders or through judicial fiat.

There are of course important discussions about justice and mercy that we must consider before reasonable student-debt reform should be pursued. When people make promises, those promises need to be kept. Debts ought to be repaid. But if there is injustice in a system, then the system also needs to be reformed, and if there is oppression in a legal or economic structure, then steps need to be taken to restore justice.

The Supreme Court has rightly decided that unjust, illegal, and unconstitutional means intended to address injustices, whether real or popularly perceived, are invalid. Injustices cannot be solved by further injustice. This is true whether we are talking about racism and discrimination or economic oppression and student-debt reform. A properly functioning and robust Supreme Court is critically important to the broader health of our political system, and in this decision as well as so many others over the last few terms, the current court has executed its duty faithfully and well.