“A Wisconsin taxpayers group has asked the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis and temporarily block the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program from taking effect,” CNN reported on Wednesday, October 19, 2022.
Taxpayers usually don’t have standing to challenge government spending in court, a tactic unsuccessfully attempted by Vietnam War opponents half a century ago, and this group’s lawsuit was summarily tossed at the district and appeals court levels (read story here).
Other lawsuits against the program have been filed by state attorney generals, and at least one federal judge questioned whether they have standing either (see story here). Those states’ argument was they’d lose loan-servicing revenue, which seems thin. Other lawsuits brought by states have resorted to the injury-to-taxpayers argument (see story here), and those don’t appear to be getting anywhere, either.
Republicans oppose student debt relief. We all know that. As for why, the answer is obscured by the fog of politics. Ask them and you’ll get specious reasons and hypocritical platitudes. Ask their opponents and you’ll get accusations (e.g., it’s grounded in racism).
My guess is it’s a mix of things: They don’t like higher education, many of their voters resent people with degrees, they don’t like any government spending except theirs, and they’ve never supported government programs that help disadvantaged students. There’s also very likely a political component: They see it as using taxpayer money to buy votes (which they aren’t above doing themselves).
In any case, whatever the specific reason(s), it comes down to the fact they don’t like helping student borrowers. Whether it’s about the money, or not liking the people who’d be helped, they appear to be searching for a legal line of attack that will work. There might be legitimate legal arguments against the program, such as the president overstepped his authority, or required administrative procedures weren’t followed, or whatever. But before those or any other arguments will be entertained by the courts, they first need to have a right to bring the issue before the courts, and that’s what they’re struggling with now.
What are the chances they’ll come up with (a) legal standing, and (b) a winning legal argument? In late September, a Forbes article (here) acknowledged they may have trouble getting past the standing hurdle, but also noted that litigation is unpredictable, and Biden’s loan forgiveness program is unprecedented, so there’s a lot of uncertainty about what will happen.
Searching the internet for commentary, I find advocacy on both sides of the issue, but nobody really knows how this is going to turn out. Law review articles can be an excellent source of objective assessment of legal issues, and Common Dreams (a progressive website, see profile here) referred (here) to a widely-cited Virginia Law Review article (here) that says “essentially no one—not taxpayers, not former borrowers, not state governments, not loan servicers, and not Congress—has standing under current law and legal precedent to challenge student debt cancellation in court.” So far, that’s how it’s going in the courts.
This is just a guess on my part, but even a highly political Supreme Court might not want to block the program, at least not before the elections. That might deepen anger at the Court by a majority of Americans, increase younger voter turnout, and risk helping Democrats enough to give them the votes in Congress to change the structure of the Court — all things the court’s conservative majority wants to avoid.