Sonia Sotomayor Just Nailed the Problem With the Student Debt Cancellation Challenge – By Hannah Levintova (Mother Jones) / Feb 28, 2023
It starts with generational wealth.
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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two separate cases that challenge President Biden’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt for approximately 40 million Americans. The two highly watched cases are both quite technical. But in the first argument of the day, Justice Sonia Sotomayor managed to cut through the legal complexity to handily summarize the problems with the case: It ignores the vast advantages of generational wealth when it comes to paying for education and the hardship that borrowers without financial help will face if Biden’s program is cancelled—and, to top it off, cancellation’s opponents are asking the high court to engage in judicial overreach to shut off a program that they simply don’t like.
“That really has us, the third branch of government, changing Congress’s words,” Sotomayor said. Among the millions of borrowers who would be helped by debt cancellation, “many of them don’t have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic. They don’t have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments. The evidence is clear that many of them will have to default.”
That first case, Biden v. Nebraska, is brought by six Republican-led states, and their argument hinges on two points. First, they say Biden’s plan would financially harm their states by hurting state tax revenue. And second, they argue that Biden is overstepping his authority by issuing the cancellation. This second piece of the argument led to a tussle between the lawyer representing the six states, Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell, and Sotomayor.
