Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a staunch defender of the Constitution. This has put him in the crosshairs of Democrats across the country.
But Clarence Thomas just handed Joe Biden a massive defeat.
Ever since being appointed to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush, Clarence Thomas has been a favorite target of the radical Left.
They view him as one of the main stumbling blocks to them fundamentally transforming this country into a socialist playground.
His unwavering fidelity to Constitutional principles has been the main reason Democrats have called for “expanding the Court” – all but saying they want to pack the Supreme Court with activists.
So far, that scheme has failed, and Justice Thomas continues to deliver blow after blow to the Biden Administration.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in two challenges involving Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Biden v. Nebraska, in which six Republican attorneys general claimed that the program is an overreach by the president.
The Biden administration’s US Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, claimed that if the payment suspension is allowed to terminate without a plan in place, “it’s undisputed that defaults and delinquencies will surge above pre-pandemic levels.”
“The states ask this court to deny that vital relief to millions of Americans, but they lacked standing to seek that result,” she explained.
Prelogar continued on to state that “the states say the Act doesn’t authorize the Secretary to ever forgive loan principal. But the Secretary’s interpretation of this text is not just a plausible reading, it’s the best reading. Congress expressly authorized the Secretary to waive or modify any title for provision in emergencies to provide financial relief to borrowers.”
Justice Clarence Thomas questioned how a waiver or modification might amount to loan cancellation, to which Prelogar said that the HEROES Act, enacted after 9/11, provides the education secretary with steps that can be taken during a national emergency.
Chief Justice John Roberts questioned the program’s $500 billion price figure, asking, “how does that fit under the normal understanding of modify?”
While the HEROES Act does not explicitly state that a cancellation could occur, it does state that the secretary of education has the authority to “waive or modify” a federal student loan program to ensure that individuals “are not placed in a worse position financially” as a result of “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
She contended that “modify has to mean making a change up to the point of wholesale elimination.” in the context of the Act.
“It would be really strange for Congress to say you can eliminate obligations altogether or tweak them just the littlest bit. But you can’t do anything in between,” she said.
Prelogar contended that the student loan program is the administration of a benefits program, and that the federal government’s forbearance policy on student loans, which has been in place since the outbreak, is an “economically significant program” that “costing the federal government more per year than this loan forgiveness plan.”
“There’s some discussion in the briefs …. that this is in effect a cancellation of a debt, that’s really what we’re talking about, and that as a cancellation of $400 billion in debt, in effect this is a grant of $400 billion and it runs headlong into Congress’ appropriations authority.” Thomas said of the cancellation of student loan debt.
According to Prelogar, the student loan program “doesn’t require any money be drawn from the Treasury, and so I don’t think that it strictly raises an appropriations issue.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Congress “could have…referred to loan cancellation” in the law, but didn’t. Instead, the administration relied on “general language” in an “old statute” to create a “massive new program.”
With the Court composition currently favoring the more conservative wing, Biden’s student loan forgiveness could be in big trouble.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
