Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 24

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

B 
In a final bid to elide the statutory text, the Secretary ap-
peals  to  congressional  purpose.    “The  whole  point  of ”  the 
HEROES Act, the Government contends, “is to ensure that 
in the face of a national emergency that is causing financial 
harm to borrowers, the Secretary can do something.”  Tr. of 
Oral  Arg.  55.    And  that  “something”  was  left  deliberately
vague because Congress intended “to grant substantial dis-
cretion to the Secretary to respond to unforeseen emergen-
cies.”  Reply Brief 22, n. 3.  So the unprecedented nature of
the Secretary’s debt cancellation plan only “reflects the pan-
demic’s unparalleled scope.”  Brief for Petitioners 52 (Brief 
for United States).

The dissent agrees.  “Emergencies, after all, are emergen-
cies,” it reasons, and “more serious measures” must be ex-
pected “in response to more serious problems.”  Post, at 25, 
28.  The dissent’s interpretation of the HEROES Act would 
grant unlimited power to the Secretary, not only to modify 
or waive certain provisions but to “fill the holes that action 
creates  with  new  terms”—no  matter  how  drastic  those 
terms might be—and to “alter [provisions] to the extent [he]
think[s]  appropriate,”  up  to  and  including  “the  most  sub-
stantial  kind  of  change”  imaginable.    Post,  at  16,  19–20. 
That is inconsistent with the statutory language and past 
practice under the statute. 

The  question  here  is  not  whether  something  should  be 
done; it is who has the authority to do it.  Our recent deci-
sion in West Virginia v. EPA involved similar concerns over 
the exercise of administrative power.  597 U. S. ___ (2022).
That case involved the EPA’s claim that the Clean Air Act 
authorized it to impose a nationwide cap on carbon dioxide 
—————— 
faces  a  daunting  task  in  showing  that  cancellation  of  debt  principal  is
“necessary to ensure” that borrowers are not placed in “worse position[s]
financially in relation to” their loans, especially given the Government’s 
prior determination that pausing interest accrual and loan repayments 
would achieve that end.