The Supreme Court has just saved American taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars by holding that President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona cannot cancel federal student loans under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, the “HEROES Act.”
First, the court assessed whether any of the challengers to cancellation had standing to sue. In Department of Education v. Brown, the answer was “no.” A unanimous court held that the borrowers couldn’t demonstrate that their failure to receive debt relief was traceable to the secretary’s decision to proceed under HEROES.
The court, however, reached the opposite conclusion in Biden v. Nebraska, filed by a coalition of six states. There the court held 6-3 that at least Missouri would suffer a financial injury directly linked to Biden’s cancellation plan, which gave the state standing to challenge the president’s authority.
