June 30, 2023 SCOTUS blocks Biden's student loan plan and limits LGBTQ protections

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday's Supreme Court decision on student loan forgiveness shows “callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court,” and alludes to recent reports of Supreme Court justices receiving gifts from GOP donors. 

“This disappointing and cruel ruling shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court. The hypocrisy is clear: as justices accept lavish, six-figure gifts, they don’t dare to help Americans saddled with student loan debt, instead siding with the powerful, big-monied interests," he said.

Cody Hounanian, executive director of the nonprofit Student Debt Crisis Center, said he and millions of other student loan borrowers are "devastated" with the Supreme Court's decision to block the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan.

He said the continued impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as inflation, has made everything from rent to food more expensive, compounding that financial insecurity after college for student loan borrowers.

He said President Joe Biden has other tools and legal authorities he can use to provide broad student debt cancellations.

As Biden is expected to speak later today, Hounanian said he'd like to hear the president lay out a "clear path forward" and a level of urgency around the situation.

In October, tens of millions of borrowers will be required to pay their monthly federal student loan bills for the first time since March 2020, the Department of Education clarified earlier this month.

The pandemic-related pause on both payments and interest accumulation has been set to end later this summer, though the exact date payments would be due was a little fuzzy.

The Biden administration had previously said that the pause would end either 60 days after June 30 or 60 days after the Supreme Court ruled on the separate student loan forgiveness program – whichever comes first.

A law passed in early June to address the debt ceiling officially prevented the pandemic-related pause from being extended again. The repayment date has been extended a total of eight times under both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The update was first reported by Politico.

Borrowers typically receive their bill statements from their loan servicer a few weeks before they are due. Not every borrower’s bill is due at the same time of the month.

The Department of Education has said that it will be in direct communication with borrowers and ramp up its communication with student loan servicers before repayment resumes.

Student loan experts recommend that borrowers reach out to their student loan servicer with any questions about their loans as soon as possible, especially if they are interested in enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan. Those plans, which set payments based on income and family size, can lower monthly payments but require borrowers to submit some paperwork.

Federal student loan borrowers can check the Federal Student Aid website for updates on resuming payments.

Read more here.

In a stinging defeat for President Joe Biden, the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday, rejecting a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers struggling with outstanding debt.

The decision was 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority.

Here's how each justice ruled:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the Supreme Court decision Friday which limited LGBTQ protections when it ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado, who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections.

“Today’s ruling by the MAGA-right activist wing of the Supreme Court is a giant step backward for human rights and equal protection in the United States," he said in a statement.

“Refusing service based on whom someone loves is just as bigoted and hateful as refusing service because of race or religion. And this is bigotry that the vast majority of Americans find completely unacceptable. By denying LGBTQ+ Americans their fundamental right to nondiscrimination, this decision erodes decades of progress established by the Court, Congress, and public sentiment," he added.

Recent polling has found that most Americans support the cancellation of up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt, with broad divides by age and party. 

A Marquette Law School poll conducted in May found that 63% of Americans favored a plan “to forgive and cancel up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt,” while 36% opposed it. By party, only about a third of Republicans (31%) favored canceling up to $20,000 of student loan debt, while most independents (69%) and Democrats (87%) were in favor of it. There was also a wide age gap, with majorities younger than 60, including 81% of those younger than 30, in favor of canceling student loan debt, while just 43% of those age 60 or older agreed. Marquette’s detailed findings can be found here.

A USA Today/Ipsos poll in April found that Americans overall were fairly divided over how they wanted the Supreme Court to rule in this case, but those who have student loan debt themselves were broadly in favor of sustaining the program. 

Overall, 42% said they would oppose the Supreme Court “overturning the current student loan forgiveness proposal,” while 35% would support the court overturning it, and a sizable 22% said they weren’t sure or gave no answer. Among those with student loans, however, 67% said they would oppose the court overturning that proposal. Asked a different way, 43% said the court should allow the forgiveness proposal to move forward, while 40% said the court should reject it. Among those with student loans, 75% said the court should allow the forgiveness plan to move forward. 

Asked whether the current proposal to forgive some student loan went far enough, 40% said it went too far, but 33% said that it was about right and 25% that it did not go far enough. That last figure doubles among those who hold student loans — 50% in that group said the proposal didn't go far enough. 

The survey also found that among those with student loans, 45% said they were extremely or very concerned about their ability to afford the monthly payments if they had to start repaying their loans today. Another 29% were somewhat concerned, with 27% not very or not at all concerned. 

The Supreme Court has blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which was aimed at delivering up to $20,000 in relief to millions of borrowers.

The decision was 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority. Roberts criticized the Biden administration for "rewriting" the law "from the ground up" when it created the program.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan condemned what she characterized as a broader trend from the conservative majority to limit executive branch discretion under a legal doctrine known as the “major questions doctrine.”

Read the full opinion below:

President Joe Biden plans to announce new actions to protect student loan borrowers when he speaks later Friday, a source familiar with the White House plans says.

The White House strongly disagrees with the decision, the source said, but had been preparing for it. 

The administration plans to make "crystal clear to borrowers and their families that Republicans are responsible for denying them the relief that President Biden has been fighting to get to them," the source said.

The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan on Friday, invalidating a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers struggling with outstanding debt in the aftermath of Covid.

A 6-3 court said the Department of Education does not have the authority to “cancel $430 billion of student loan principal.” 

“The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, referring to the secretary of education. “It does not."

The HEROES Act is a 2003 law that the Biden administration argued grants the executive branch emergency power to implement the student loan forgiveness program.

“We hold today that the Act allows the secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory provisions,” but, Roberts said, it does not allow the secretary to “rewrite that statute from the ground up.”

He said the government needed direct authorization from Congress before attempting to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.  

“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,” Roberts wrote.

“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,” he said.