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Page Number: 75

28

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

relief  when  an  emergency  has  inflicted  greater  harm?   
I 
can’t  believe  the  majority  really  thinks  Congress  would 
have  answered  “no.”  In  any  event,  the  statute  Congress 
passed does not say “no.”  Delegations like the HEROES Act 
are  designed  to  enable  agencies  to  “adapt  their  rules  and 
policies to the demands of changing circumstances.”  FDA 
v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 157 
(2000).  Congress  allows,  and  indeed  expects,  agencies  to 
take  more  serious  measures  in  response  to  more  serious
problems.

Similarly unavailing is the majority’s reliance on the con-
troversy surrounding the program.  Student-loan cancella-
tion, the majority says, “raises questions that are personal 
and  emotionally  charged,”  precipitating  “profound  debate
across  the  country.”    Ante,  at  22.  I  have  no  quarrel  with
that description.  Student-loan forgiveness, and responses 
to COVID generally, have joined the list of issues on which 
this Nation is divided.  But that provides yet more reason 
for the Court to adhere to its properly limited role.  There 
are two paths here.  One is to respect the political branches’ 
judgments.  On that path, the Court recognizes the breadth 
of  Congress’s  delegation  to  the  Secretary,  and  declines  to 
interfere  with  his  use  of  that  granted  authority.    Maybe 
Congress was wrong to give the Secretary so much discre-
tion;  or  maybe  he,  and  the  President  he  serves,  did  not
make good use of it.  But if so, there are political remedies—
accountability  for  all  the  actors,  up  to  the  President,  who
the public thinks have made mistakes.  So a political con-
troversy is resolved by political means, as our Constitution 
requires.  That is one path.  Now here is the other, the one 
the  Court  takes.  Wielding  its  judicially  manufactured 
heightened-specificity  requirement,  the  Court  refuses  to
acknowledge  the  plain  words  of  the  HEROES  Act.    It  de-
clines  to  respect  Congress’s  decision  to  give  broad  emer-
gency powers to the Secretary.  It strikes down his lawful 
use of that authority to provide student-loan assistance.  It