Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 71.0

24 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

thinks best.  See West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___–___, ___– 
___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 13–19, 28–33).  The new 
major-questions doctrine works not to better understand—
but instead to trump—the scope of a legislative delegation. 
See id., at ___ (slip op., at 32).  Here is a fact of the matter: 
Congress delegates to agencies often and broadly.  And  it 
usually does so for sound reasons.  Because agencies have
expertise  Congress  lacks.  Because  times  and  circum-
stances change, and agencies are better able to keep up and 
respond.  Because Congress knows that if it had to do eve-
rything,  many  desirable  and  even  necessary  things
wouldn’t get done.  In wielding the major-questions sword,
last Term and this one, this Court overrules those legisla-
tive judgments.  The doctrine forces Congress to delegate in 
highly  specific  terms—respecting,  say,  loan  forgiveness  of 
certain  amounts  for  borrowers  of  certain  incomes  during
pandemics  of  certain  magnitudes.    Of  course  Congress
sometimes delegates in that way.  But also often not.  Be-
cause if Congress authorizes loan forgiveness, then what of 
loan  forbearance?    And  what  of  the  other  10  or  20  or  50 
knowable and unknowable things the Secretary could do? 
And should the measure taken—whether forgiveness or for-
bearance or anything else—always be of the same size?  Or 
go to the same classes of people?  Doesn’t it depend on the
nature  and  scope  of  the  pandemic,  and  on  a host  of other 
foreseeable  and  unforeseeable  factors?    You  can  see  the 
problem.  It is hard to identify and enumerate every possi-
ble application of a statute to every possible condition years
in the future.  So, again, Congress delegates broadly.  Ex-
cept that this Court now won’t let it reap the benefits of that
choice. 

And that is a major problem not just for governance, but 
for democracy too.  Congress is of course a democratic insti-
tution; it responds, even if imperfectly, to the preferences of 
American  voters.    And  agency  officials,  though  not  them-