BREAKING: The justices split the decision 6-3, with the conservative majority saying the president does not have the authority to unilaterally act without congressional approval.
to cancel student loan debt for more than 40 million Americans.
The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Student Act of 2003 program would have forgiven eligible borrowers of up to $20,000 each, costing some $400 billion overall, but it was blocked by an appeals court in October.6-3, with the conservative majority saying the president—and his secretary of education—do not have the authority to unilaterally act without congressional approval.
“The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “It does not. We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.
In her dissent for the court’s liberal wing, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that striking down loan forgiveness would mean usurping congressional and executive branch power to make national policy. “Congress authorized the forgiveness plan ; the Secretary put it in place; and the President would have been accountable for its success or failure,” she wrote. “But this Court today decides that some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides, because that assistance is too ‘significant.’”at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, calling them racially biased.
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