Supreme Court's Student Debt Rebuff Exposes Its Judicial Activism

In a major rebuff to the Biden administration, the Supreme Court has struck down, 6-3, the $430 billion student loan forgiveness program adopted under the secretary of education’s emergency powers. The court held that the loan forgiveness went beyond the secretary’s legal authority to “waive or modify” any provision of the relevant law when deemed necessary in an emergency — in this case, the Covid pandemic.

To reach that conclusion, the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, invoked the new legal rule known as the “major questions doctrine” that he first introduced last year in the important carbon dioxide emissions case, West Virginia v. EPA. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan attacked the major questions doctrine as a “made up” doctrine designed to give the justices the power to overturn executive action they don’t like.