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Comment by jadamson | Hacker News Reader

If Congress wants to give the President the power to forgive student loans, they will surely do so explicitly.

Not what Kagen was saying.

The court is only supposed to decide things when someone has been injured. Who was injured in this case?

The issue here is one of standing. The litigant had no standing, this case shouldn't have been heard by the supreme court. Or the hearing should have literally been "you have no standing".

Now, if congress feels like Joe Biden stepped out of line, THEY could have sued him. That would have been the proper course of action.

Here, the court has issued an advisory opinion, which is not it's role nor power. The court is out of line here.

Missouri would have been injured because repayment of loans would provides them with income, which will now decrease. It seems fairly straightforward.

Kagan* explicitly references the court "[refusing] to respect the full scope of the delegations that Congress makes to the Executive Branch", which is simply not what happened. Congress did not delegate that power to the executive.

It's odd to get something so fundamentally incorrect and go "trust me bro" when it comes to the issue of standing. Apart from anything else, has she never heard the maxim "stick to one lie at a time"?

> The court is only supposed to decide things when someone has been injured. Who was injured in this case?

It’s literally the first point held. "Here, as the Government concedes, the Secretary’s plan would cost MOHELA, a nonprofit government corporation created by Missouri to participate in the student loan market, an estimated $44 million a year in fees".

Actually, MOHELA specifically said it was not harmed by the loan forgiveness and wanted nothing to do with the case. This is why many are baffled by the Court's decision to ignore Standing.

MOHELA said no such thing, although it's apparent that many of their employees were against the case. The case was filed by the Missouri AG, who doesn't require every (or indeed any) individual employee of MOHELA to agree in order to prove harm to the state of Missouri.

"In Supreme Court oral arguments, it was revealed that MOHELA hasn’t made a contribution to that fund in 15 years...Furthermore, an analysis from the Roosevelt Institute and the Debt Collective shows that MOHELA stands to gain revenue if debt cancellation goes forward."

The Student Loan Case’s Unwilling Participant (https://prospect.org/justice/2023-06-19-student-loan-cancell...)

So they didn't say they were not harmed, not even in those internal emails (which are pearl-clutching about the optics of the situation). After that, what we have left is an analysis by a third party which has been ripped to shreds:

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/06/new-report-on-state-sta...

When Adler says that the report is "carefully worded", what he means is that it is designed to mislead, and he's right.

> The authors of the report are essentially trying to argue that because MOHELA revenues are higher than they used to be, it does not matter that, without loan cancellation, they would be higher still.

Edit: Volokh -> Adler

So if MOHELA were actually harmed -- shouldn't they be the plaintiff in the lawsuit?

Their owners - the State of Missouri - are the plaintiff. It should go without saying that I don't require my employees to support legal actions I undertake relating to an entity that I own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Education_Loan_Authorit...

Edit: In reality, the technicalities in this case stretch that analogy - Adler writes about that as well in his penultimate paragraph, linking to opinions falling on either side:

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/02/08/arguments-for-standing-...

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/02/09/third-party-standing-do...

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/05/does-anyone-have-standi...

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