Supreme Court Expected to Rule on Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness and Affirmative Action Cases This Week

WASHINGTON (TND) — All eyes are on the Supreme Court this week as the nation’s top court is expected to release decisions on 10 cases, including President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and as well as two dealing with affirmative action.

Biden’s plan would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for people who made less than $125,000 in 2020 or 2021, and $250,000 for couples. Students who received Pell grants are eligible for an additional $10,000 in relief.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of suspending student loans will be about $400 billion over the next ten years, one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history.

There are two lawsuits involved in potential student loan debt decisions: Biden v. Nebraska, which involves six states, and Department of Education v. Brown, which involves two students.

“The bigger question for this case is really does the court think these are the right people to be bringing that case? And so it’s a little harder to predict what they will do on that on those grounds, whether these are the right parties, but I think it’s very clear that one way or the other, whether it’s this term or next term, that that is ultimately going to be overruled, because it’s so clearly unconstitutional for the President to try to spend money himself without a clear congressional finding and congressional law to support it,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network.

The Administration points to the HEROES Act of 2003, which grants the U.S. Secretary of Education the authority to make changes related to student loans during a national emergency like COVID-19, as an argument.

However, Severino argues that the law does not work like that.

“You have to do that the way the Constitution prescribes, and that is passing legislation through the House and the Senate and signing it. It’s really back to Schoolhouse Rock, folks, that’s that’s the way the government’s supposed to be run,” Severino explained.

If the court did rule in favor of Biden, Robert Patillo, civil rights attorney with Patillo Law Group, LLC., says the conversation would not end there.

There’s going to be a massive push from the progressive side of the aisle to say, ‘well, if you can do $10,000 Why not all?’” the lawyer said.

The nine justices will decided whether colleges and universities can continue to use race in the admission process.

“The Constitution is colorblind here,” Severino said. “We need to make sure that racial preferences have no have no place in our public universities or in universities that receive public funding.”

There are two suits dealing with this as well, one with Harvard and the other with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“I’ll say that the precedent that’s controlling right now that gives a limited ability for schools to consider race and admissions, even on its own terms would expire in just a few years. And Justice O’Connor said this shouldn’t be necessary for more than 25 more years, and we’re almost to that point,” Severino said.

“This is really the Supreme Court just recognizing that that experiment in allowing race conscious decision making has, has not been successful. And in that what we really need to do is to return to our roots of if the true promise of the equal protection clause of the Civil Rights Act.”

According to Severino, affirmative action policies hurt Asian students. However, Patillo fears the end of affirmative action would be a huge step backwards.

“This will be the the doorway to the resegregation of America,” he said.