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Comment by mydriasis | Hacker News Reader

This is a lot to read and I'm not very good at legalese... Anyone care to explain in layman's terms?

The SCOTUS feels that there should continue to be enforcement of the idea of separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The SCOTUS believes, in this very specific instance, that the executive should not have the power to forgive student loans and it should be left to, what I assume, is the legislative branch to deal with it instead.

The Republican SCOTUS feels that it should have completed unchecked power to invalidate any laws or policies to which it is ideologically opposed. Its power has never been checked. It has only ever usurped and expanded its power, and only ever moderated under the threat of being packed. The constitution gives Congress the explicit power to set the jurisdiction of the supreme court, which to my knowledge, has never been used to restrict their power.

The Republican supreme court believes all policy decisions should be left to the legislative branch, not because Congress cannot delegate authority, but because the filibuster completely guarantees that nothing can become law without a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, which in the current political environment means votes from several members of the hyper partisan Republican party.

It's like all the celebration of George Washington relinquishing power after two terms. "Wow no one has done that before! So progressive!" But he was a property owner, in a country where only property owners could vote, and he knew that only property owners would hold any elected positions in the US government. He knew that the political interests of landowners would take precedence over all others, so why would he care who ran the country? This is the situation with our Congress. Nothing can pass without a supermajority in the Senate, requiring hyper partisan Republicans to give Democrats a win, which they will not do.

The supreme courts power is very clearly checked by congress’ ability to pass legislation. Debt forgiveness can still happen, it just required congress to legislate instead of hoping executive orders can be used to replace legislation.

Congress used their constitutional authority to delegate certain decisions to an office administered by the executive branch because they decided they would be ineffective at legislating on the individual issues. The court is replacing that legislation with an injunction forcing Congress to legislate on the individual issues. Congress can eventually legislate a check on judicial overreach, but the damage here is done.

The first three pages are a summary in relatively plain language.

[GPT-4 generated summary]

The case: The Supreme Court ruled that the Secretary of Education exceeded his authority under the HEROES Act when he canceled $430 billion of student loan debt in 2022. The Court held that the Act only allowed the Secretary to make minor changes to existing provisions, not to create a new loan forgiveness program.

The standing: The Court found that Missouri had standing to challenge the Secretary’s plan because it harmed MOHELA, a public corporation created and controlled by the State to provide student loans. The Court said that the harm to MOHELA in its public function was a direct injury to Missouri itself.

The reasoning: The Court relied on the text and purpose of the HEROES Act, as well as its precedents on major questions and separation of powers. The Court said that the Act did not authorize the Secretary to rewrite the Education Act, which specified limited circumstances for loan discharge. The Court also said that Congress would not have intended to delegate such sweeping authority to the Secretary through a subtle device like permission to “waive or modify”.

Congress never directly authorized the president to forgive student loans. Biden was claiming that he had the power indirectly because of a law that says he can "modify" loans in times of "emergency" (this was used to pause repayment in 2020). But SCOTUS has ruled that fully forgiving them too far beyond merely "modifying". There is a principle called the "major questions doctrine" that any major action must be very explicitly authorized by Congress (i.e. Congress doesn't grant huge powers without saying so).

Interesting -- is a "major action" defined legally as well?

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