President Joe Biden’s efforts to cancel student debt for millions of Americans “fall comfortably” within the law and enjoy “clear authorization” from Congress, the Justice Department argued Wednesday in its opening brief defending the policy before the Supreme Court. The court filing, submitted late Wednesday evening, marks the beginning of a high-stakes battle at the court in the coming months over the fate of one of Biden’s major domestic policy programs. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in February in two cases challenging the debt relief program, which provides up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness for tens of millions of borrowers. One case is a lawsuit by six Republican-led states, led by Nebraska and Missouri. A second case was brought by a conservative advocacy group on behalf of two Texas student loan borrowers who were partially or fully excluded from the program.
The brief filed Wednesday largely echo the legal arguments that the Biden administration has been making in lower courts over the past several months. It argues, first, that Supreme Court should toss out the case because the GOP states and Texas borrowers lack legal standing to bring the case. But, the Biden administration argues, the program is clearly legal in any event. Administration officials argue that they have the authority to cancel large amounts of debt under the HEROES Act, a 2003 law that gives the Education Department the power to waive the laws that typically govern federal student loans during national emergencies. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s “actions fall comfortably within the plain text” of the HEROES Act, the brief says. The brief also laments lower court decisions that have frozen the program since this fall.
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“The lower courts’ orders have erroneously deprived the Secretary of his statutory authority to provide targeted student-loan debt relief to borrowers affected by national emergencies, leaving millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo,” the Justice Department wrote.
