US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3973

Supreme Court kills Biden student loan relief plan
The Supreme Court on Friday invalidated President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan, meaning the long-delayed proposal intended to implement a campaign trail promise will not go into effect.

The justices, divided 6-3 on ideological lines, ruled in one of two cases that the program was an unlawful exercise of presidential power because it had not been explicitly approved by Congress.

The court rejected the Biden administration's arguments that the plan was lawful under a 2003 law called the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act. The law says the government can provide relief to recipients of student loans when there is a “national emergency,” allowing it to act to ensure people are not in “a worse position financially” as a result of the emergency.

Chief Justice John Roberts said the HEROES Act language was not specific enough, writing that the court's precedent "requires that Congress speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy."

The plan, which would have allowed eligible borrowers to cancel up to $20,000 in debt and would have cost more than $400 billion, has been blocked since the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary hold in October.

About 43 million Americans would have been eligible to participate.

The student loan proposal is important politically to Biden, as tackling student loan debt was a key pledge he made on the campaign trail in 2020 to energize younger voters.

The ruling will immediately put pressure on the Biden administration to find an alternative avenue to forgive student debt that could potentially withstand legal challenge.

Advocates, as well as some Democrats in Congress, say the Education Department has broad power to forgive student loan debt under the 1965 Higher Education Act, a different law to the one at issue in the Supreme Court cases.

Separately, the student loan repayment process is set to begin again at the end of August after having been put on pause during the Covid-19 pandemic, although first payments will not be due until October.

The court considered two cases: one brought by six states, including Missouri, and the other brought by two people who hold student loan debt, Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor. The court ruled that the program was unlawful in the case brought by states but found in the second case that the challengers did not have legal standing.

The three liberal justices on the conservative-majority bench dissented, with Justice Elena Kagan saying that by ruling against the plan, the court had "exceeded its proper limited role in our nation's governance."

She said the states bringing the challenge did not have legal standing to even bring the case, and in analyzing HEROES Act, the conservative justices ignored the clear language of the law.

"The result here is that the court substitutes itself for Congress and the executive branch in making national policy about student-loan forgiveness," Kagan wrote.

The court decided the case in part based on a legal argument made by the challengers that the conservative majority has recently embraced called the “major questions doctrine.”

Under the theory, federal agencies cannot initiate sweeping new policies that have significant economic impacts without having express authorization from Congress.

The conservative majority cited the major questions doctrine last year in blocking Biden’s Covid vaccination-or-test requirement for larger businesses and curbing the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon emissions from power plants.

The challengers argued that the administration’s proposal — announced by Biden in August and originally scheduled to take effect last fall — violated the Constitution and federal law, partly because it circumvented Congress, which they said has the sole power to create laws related to student loan forgiveness.

Biden had proposed canceling student loan debt during the 2020 presidential election campaign.

The administration ultimately proposed forgiving up to $10,000 in debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year (or couples who file taxes jointly and earn less than $250,000 annually). Pell Grant recipients, who are the majority of borrowers, would be eligible for $10,000 more in debt relief.

The administration closed the application process after the plan was blocked. Holders of student loan debt currently do not have to make payments as part of Covid relief measures that will remain in effect until after the Supreme Court issues its ruling.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that Biden’s plan would cost $400 billion.

Supreme Court says First Amendment entitles web designer to refuse to do gay weddings
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 long ideological lines that the First Amendment bars Colorado from "forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees."

The case pitted laws that guarantee same-sex couples equal access to all businesses that offer their services to the public against business owners who see themselves as artists and don't want to use their talents to express a message that they don't believe in.

For nearly a decade, the justices have dodged and weaved on this clash of legal values, declining to hear some cases and punting on one involving a baker who refused to make custom wedding cakes for same-sex couples. But now the issue was back before a far more conservative court, a court that reached out to hear the case even before any same-sex couples complained that they were the victims of illegal discrimination.

The plaintiff in the case, instead, is business owner Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who for the past decade has created all kinds of custom websites for clients.

Smith says that because of Colorado's public accommodations law, she cannot do what she wants to do most — custom web designs for weddings. The reason: She believes that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser says the state law is not seeking to dictate what Smith says in her web designs. He contends that Colorado allows any individual or business to create whatever they want, but "if you open your doors and say you are serving the public, you have to serve everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, religion, race or gender."

The state doesn't care about Smith's message, he adds. Rather, "The question is more one of conduct. Will you sell the product or service to whoever from the public knocks on your door."

Web designer Smith notes that she has created websites for gay and lesbian clients selling other products and services, but that she believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Moreover, she says she has refused to use her talents for those who want to convey all kinds of other messages as well.

On Friday, the court agreed.

Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said: "Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrating marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create custom websites celebrating other marriages she does not. ... If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs, sanctions that may include compulsory participation in 'remedial . . . training,' filing periodic compliance reports, and paying monetary fines. That is an impermissible abridgement of the First Amendment's right to speak freely."

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class."

She added: "Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women's rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims."