Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 69.0

22 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

suspension could no more meet the majority’s pivotal defi-
nition  of  “modify”—as  make  a  “minor  change[]”—than 
could the forgiveness plan.  Ante, at 13.  On the majority’s
telling,  Congress  thought  that  in  the  event  of  a  national
emergency financially harming borrowers—under a statute 
gearing potential relief to the measure of that harm, so that 
affected borrowers end up no less able to repay their loans—
the Secretary can do no more than fiddle.  He can, the ma-
jority says, “reduc[e] the number of tax forms borrowers are
required to file.”  Ibid.  Or he can “waive[ ] the requirement
that a student provide a written request for a leave of ab-
sence.”  Ante, at 15.  But he can do nothing that would ame-
liorate  an  emergency’s  economic  impact  on  student-loan 
borrowers. 

That  is  not  the  statute  Congress  wrote.  The  HEROES 
Act was designed to deal with national emergencies—typi-
cally major in scope, often unpredictable in nature.  It gave
the Secretary discretionary authority to relieve borrowers
of the adverse impacts of many possible crises—as “neces-
sary” to ensure that those individuals are not “in a worse 
position financially” to make repayment.  §1098bb(a)(2).  If 
all  the  Act’s  triggers  are  met,  the  Secretary  can  waive  or 
modify the usual provisions relating to student loans, and 
substitute new terms and conditions.  That power extends
to the varied provisions governing loan repayment and dis-
charge.  Those provisions are, indeed, the most obvious can-
didates for alteration under a statute drafted to leave bor-
rowers no worse off, in relation to their loans, than before 
an emergency struck.  But the majority will not accept the 
statute’s meaning.  At every pass, it “impos[es] limits on an 
agency’s discretion that are not supported by the text.”  Lit-
tle Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Penn-
sylvania, 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 16).  It refuses 
to apply the Act in accordance with its terms.  Explains the
majority:  “However  broad  the  meaning  of  ‘waive  or  mod-
ify’ ”—meaning  however  much  power  Congress  gave  the