The conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court has been busy in the final days before its summer break, and the decisions it handed down this week have heartened and made Congressional Republicans mostly happy and left their colleagues on the other side of the aisle mostly unhappy and in many cases angry.
Following the court’s historic decisions on June 29, upending a half-century in which it was legal for colleges and universities to factor in race when making admissions decisions, the court issued findings the following day on two cases, both of which have fervent cultural and political constituencies at odds with and divided against each other.
Both the rulings issued on June 30 were along strict ideological lines, with each a 6-3 tally.
Conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas formed the majority; Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor constituted the minority.
The court struck down President Joe Biden’s program, which he announced last August, and which had been stalled by challenges in lower courts, to forgive student loan debt.
It also ruled that a Colorado graphic designer, who is an evangelical Christian, could legally refuse to create a website for a same-sex wedding.
No Loan Relief
If the Biden loan-relief proposal had become law, an individual borrower making $125,000 annually or less was eligible for up to $10,000 of the debt cancelled; but individual borrowers who made up to $125,000 a year or less and who also took out a Pell Grant could have seen $20,000 in relief. Families could qualify for debt forgiveness if they made $250,000 a year or less.
As many as 40 million borrowers could have found relief under the plan, with the cost to taxpayers figured at about $400 billion.
“President Biden’s student loan giveaway is ruled UNLAWFUL. The 87% of Americans without student loans are no longer forced to pay for the 13% who do,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted. “This builds on the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s end to the payment pause. The President must follow the law.”
By Ross Muscato
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