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Page Number: 21

16 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

Opinion of the Court 

tion Act establishes an obligation on the part of student bor-
rowers to pay back the Government.  So as the Government 
concedes,  “waiver”—as  used  in  the  HEROES  Act—cannot 
refer to “waiv[ing] loan balances” or “waiving the obligation
to repay” on the part of a borrower.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 9, 64. 
Contrast  20  U. S. C.  §1091b(b)(2)(D)  (allowing  the  Secre-
tary  to  “waive  the  amounts  that  students  are  required  to 
return”  in  specified  circumstances  of  overpayment  by  the 
Government).  Because the Secretary cannot waive a par-
ticular provision or provisions to achieve the desired result,
he  is  forced  to  take  a  more  circuitous  approach,  one  that
avoids any need to show compliance with the statutory lim-
itation on his authority.  He simply “waiv[es] the elements
of the discharge and cancellation provisions that are inap-
plicable in this [debt cancellation] program that would limit
eligibility to other contexts.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 64–65. 

Yet even that expansive conception of waiver cannot jus-
tify  the  Secretary’s  plan,  which  does  far  more  than  relax 
existing legal requirements.  The plan specifies particular
sums  to  be  forgiven  and  income-based  eligibility  require-
ments.  The addition of these new and substantially differ-
ent provisions cannot be said to be a “waiver” of the old in 
any  meaningful  sense.  Recognizing  this,  the  Secretary
acknowledges that waiver alone is not enough; after waiv-
ing whatever “inapplicable” law would bar his debt cancel-
lation  plan,  he says,  he  then  “modif[ied]  the provisions  to
bring [them] in line with this program.”  Id., at 65.  So in 
the end, the Secretary’s plan relies on modifications all the 
way down.  And as  we have explained, the word “modify” 
simply cannot bear that load.

The  Secretary  and  the  dissent  go  on  to  argue  that  the
power  to  “waive  or  modify”  is  greater  than  the  sum  of  its 
—————— 
to “waivers and modifications” generally, see 87 Fed. Reg. 61512–61514, 
and  while  two  sentences  use  the  somewhat  ambiguous  phrase  “[t]his 
waiver,” id., at 61514, the notice identifies no specific legal provision as 
having been “waived” by the Secretary.