The Biden administration has stopped taking applications for student loan debt relief, indicating that it may be considering another approach to the problem of student loans or may be abandoning the plan altogether.
Biden’s fig-leaf legal justification — basing the constitutionality of the program on a 2003 law that forgave some student loans from military members who served — fell apart under the stern pen of U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman, who correctly pointed out that the Department of Education didn’t have the legal authority to offer loan forgiveness on that scale. He also made it clear that the education department had “usurped” the power of the legislative branch in forgiving debt.
But that was only the latest legal setback for the program. Six Republican states successfully halted the Department of Education from writing off any debt while they considered their own lawsuit.
At the very least, the courts are going to force Biden to rethink his legal justification. And if he can’t find one, the administration will have no choice but to cancel it.
The key issue is one of standing and whether the plaintiffs have the legal right to sue. Judge Pittman believes that the two plaintiffs who are party to the suit enjoy standing based on the harm that the debt forgiveness program would do to them.
The case in Texas had two plaintiffs: Myra Brown, whose loans are privately held and therefore not eligible for the relief program, and Alexander Taylor, who was eligible for up to $10,000 in forgiveness, not $20,000, because he had not received a Pell Grant. Pittman ruled that they could sue because they had not been given the chance to advocate for a forgiveness program that would give them more relief.
But legal experts are divided on whether that definition of standing will hold up.
“The standing part is all wrong and inconsistent with everything that’s ever been said about standing,” George Washington University law professor Richard J. Pierce Jr., an expert in administrative law, told the Los Angeles Times. Nobody can claim standing to sue by arguing that he should have been a beneficiary of an agency’s action, therefore he wasn’t harmed because he wasn’t helped, Pierce said.
Standing is one issue, but Pittman may have a better case on purely constitutional grounds.
As for whether the HEROES Act authorizes the debt relief program, Pittman grounds his ruling in part on the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia vs. the Environmental Protection Agency, a case challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A divided court in June strengthened its “major questions doctrine,” limiting the power of administrative agencies to take actions that have sweeping consequences without specific authority from Congress.
Biden is not likely to give up until the Supreme Court is given a chance to weigh in. But given his track record so far, it doesn’t look promising.
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