If they find standing, it's likely to shed more light on the MQD, todays NYT: "There was something close to a consensus that the debt forgiveness program qualified as major.
"We're talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans," Chief Justice Roberts said, referring to the number of affected borrowers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. indicated that the ordinary colloquial meaning of "major questions" encompassed "what the government proposes to do with student loans."
Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, said the sums involved were legally significant. "That seems to favor the argument that this is a major question," she said."
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NYT today on Standing: "The first question in both cases is whether the plaintiffs have suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gives them standing to sue.
The point of the standing doctrine, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, is to "allow the political branches to hash this out without interference, you know, from a torrent of lawsuits brought by states and entities and individuals who don't have a real personal stake in the outcome."
Much of the argument focused on a nonprofit entity that services federal loans, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, also known as MOHELA. The challengers argued that its potential losses from the loan forgiveness program were enough to confer standing because it is effectively an arm of the State of Missouri. They also argued that the authority might fail to make payments to Missouri if the program were allowed to proceed.
Justice Kagan said it was significant that the loan authority itself had not sued over the debt forgiveness program.
"Usually we don't allow one person to step into another's shoes and say, 'I think that that person suffered a harm,' even if the harm is very great," she said.
If Missouri really controlled the loan authority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked James A. Campbell, Nebraska's solicitor general, who represented the states, "why didn't the state just make MOHELA come then?"
Mr. Campbell said that it was "a question of state politics."
Ms. Prelogar conceded that the loan authority would have standing had it chosen to sue in its own name. But it did not, she said, and Missouri was not entitled to sue on its behalf.
Justice Jackson said that the authority was independent of the state.
"Its financial interests are totally disentangled from the state, it stands alone, it's incorporated separately, the state is not liable for anything that happens to MOHELA," she said. "I don't know how that could possibly be a reason to say that an injury to MOHELA should count as an injury to the state."
Given the inclination of the conservative justices to question the legality of the program, if the administration is to prevail it may have to do so on the standing question. But there was little evidence that the conservatives were particularly receptive to the administration's position on that issue in the first case, Biden v. Nebraska, No. 22-506.
The second case, Department of Education v. Brown, No. 22-535, was brought by the two borrowers, Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor, and it also raised questions about standing. Ms. Brown is ineligible for relief under the plan because her loans are held by commercial entities rather than the government, while Mr. Taylor is eligible for $10,000 rather than $20,000 because he did not receive a Pell grant.
A trial court ruled that they had standing to sue because they had been deprived of the opportunity to urge the administration to expand the plan to provide greater debt relief.
Justices across the ideological spectrum seemed unpersuaded by the borrowers' position.
"Talk about ways in which courts can interfere with the processes of government through two individuals in one state who don't like the program," Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said, and "can seek and obtain a universal relief barring it for anybody anywhere."
If the Supreme Court rules that at least one plaintiff in one of the cases has standing, it will address whether the debt forgiveness plan is lawful."
