Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 49.0

2 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Presidents  decided  to  use  their  HEROES  Act  authority.
The first suspended loan repayments and interest accrual
for all federally held student loans.  The second continued 
that  policy  for  a  time,  and  then  replaced  it  with  the  loan
forgiveness plan at issue here, granting most low- and mid-
dle-income borrowers up to $10,000 in debt relief.  Both re-
lied on the HEROES Act language cited above.  In estab-
lishing  the  loan  forgiveness  plan,  the  current  Secretary
scratched  the  pre-existing  conditions  for  loan  discharge, 
and specified different conditions, opening loan forgiveness 
to more borrowers.  So he “waive[d]” and “modif[ied]” stat-
utory  and  regulatory  provisions  and  applied  other  “terms 
and conditions” in their stead.  That may have been a good 
idea, or it may have been a bad idea.  Either way, the Sec-
retary did only what Congress had told him he could. 

The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at
all.  Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must 
have standing to challenge a government action.  And that 
requires a personal stake—an injury in fact.  We do not al-
low plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. 
Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by 
others.  Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce
“fundamental  limits  on  federal  judicial  power.”  Allen  v. 
Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984).  They keep courts acting 
like courts.  Or stated the other way around, they prevent 
courts from acting like this Court does today.  The plaintiffs
in  this  case  are  six  States  that  have  no  personal  stake  in
the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan.  They are classic ide-
ological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but
they are no worse off because the Secretary differs.  In giv-
ing those States a forum—in adjudicating their complaint—
the Court forgets its proper role.  The Court acts as though
it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than
of cases and controversies. 

And the Court’s role confusion persists when it takes up
the merits.  For years, this Court has insisted that the way