Supreme Court Watch: Student Debt Relief

One trend is to have state governments join together to oppose major federal policies, including those of specific presidents. The efforts can be good or bad.

This includes the 5-4 case of Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), involving the standing of states to bring a case to require regulation related to global warming.  Federal courts accepting people to make their case (thus having a shot at the merits) has long been a battle.  

A major example would be the whole "qualified immunity" business, where someone cannot even allege harm because it is argued the law is too unclear that the alleged guilty party would have knew it was wrong or for some other reason such as national security. This might lead to total immunity and can be unjust.  Other times, people really should not be able get standing since they really don't have a relevant injury. 

(One more example here would be the contraceptives case in Poe and Griswold.   Also, there was an ongoing attempt to make it hard for abortion limits to be challenged, individual patients not likely to have the time to do so.)

States have been challenging the Biden Administration repeatedly, including his student loan forgiveness action.  Experts have basically said there is no real standing argument that is credible to challenge it, but some weak arguments were made. One won in the (of course) Fifth Circuit, including a national injunction (another controversial issue open to abuse).  

The Biden Administration asked SCOTUS to either lift the stay or grant the case for review.  SCOTUS after our last entry did #2 and set up a quick oral argument schedule.  Amy Howe summarizes:

The Supreme Court will fast-track a challenge to the Biden administration’s student-debt relief program and hear oral argument in February, the court said Thursday. The $400 billion program will remain on hold in the meantime due to lower-court rulings that have blocked the government from implementing it.

She also links an article to give us a sense of where things are. This is an important thing for coverage and analysis. Any given subject (let's say the latest railroad labor dispute) has various moving parts, including votes, the lay of the land, and the latest events. Amy Howe, for instance, notes that the Biden Administration "extended the pause on student loan repayments." What does that mean? From the linked article:

Payments will resume 60 days after the Department is permitted to implement the program or the litigation is resolved, which will give the Supreme Court an opportunity to resolve the case during its current Term. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, 2023 – payments will resume 60 days after that.

Got that?  A key matter there is that the "extension" is not immediate. These things tend to be complicated. The results of Supreme Court rulings tend to be complicated.  For instance, listening to a video related to the depressing latest "legislative prayer case" (as Kagan notes in dissent, it is not a legislative prayer case), the aftermath sounds like it was more positive than the blunt result of the ruling itself suggested it might.  

(To take another more extreme example, losing a capital appeal at SCOTUS doesn't mean an execution necessarily.  Richard Glossip years later is still alive.)  

The big orals this week: the discriminatory website and the independent state legislature are prime cases that are likely to be messy.  The latter has received a lot of attention, especially the fear of an extreme version.  But, it is quite possible some middle way will be found that is still a problem.  Ditto the first case.  The case was taken, with a narrowed question, in part to seem "moderate" or "reasonable" but with poison pill implications.    

Amidst one of the most hostile legal landscapes for trans people in U.S. history, the first ever cohort of out trans attorneys were admitted to practice before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

A case about the alleged right of a wedding web designer to discriminate against same sex couples makes this pretty relevant.  I caught it among the SCOTUSBlog daily news wrap-ups. It's a nice story. Clearly, trans attorneys were admitted before now.  This is the "first ever cohort of out trans attorneys." The article notes the liberal justices seemed to be particularly pleased for them.  

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So, the Supreme Court has some orals (two big) this week, and will on Friday have a conference.  Next week will have a scheduled Order Day on Monday. Then, they go on a a winter break.  There are two executions at this point (Idaho's cancelled for lack of drugs) scheduled next week.