Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 70.0

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

23 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Secretary—this program is just too large.  Ante, at 18. 

B 
The tell comes in the last part of the majority’s opinion.
When a court is confident in its interpretation of a statute’s 
text, it spells out its reading and hits the send button.  Not 
this Court, not today.  This Court needs a whole other chap-
ter to explain why it is striking down the Secretary’s plan. 
And that chapter is not about the statute Congress passed 
and the President signed, in their representation of many
millions  of  citizens.  It  instead  expresses  the  Court’s  own
“concerns over the exercise of administrative power.”  Ante, 
at  19.  Congress  may  have  wanted  the  Secretary  to  have
wide  discretion  during  emergencies  to  offer  relief  to  stu-
dent-loan borrowers.  Congress in fact drafted a statute say-
ing as much.  And the Secretary acted under that statute in
a way that subjects the President he serves to political ac-
countability—the judgment of voters.  But none of that is 
enough.  This  Court  objects  to  Congress’s  permitting  the
Secretary  (and  other  agency  officials)  to  answer  so-called
major  questions.    Or  at  least  it  objects  when  the  answers
given are not to the Court’s satisfaction.  So the Court puts
its  own  heavyweight  thumb  on  the  scales.    It  insists  that 
“[h]owever broad” Congress’s delegation to the Secretary, it
(the Court) will not allow him to use that general authori-
zation to resolve important issues.  The question, the ma-
jority helpfully tells us, is “who has the authority” to make
such significant calls.  Ibid.  The answer, as is now becom-
ing  commonplace,  is  this  Court.  See,  e.g.,  West  Virginia, 
597 U. S. ___; Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of 
Health  and  Human  Servs.,  594  U. S.  ___  (2021);  see  also 
Sackett v. EPA, 598 U. S. ___ (2023) (using a similar judi-
cially manufactured tool to negate statutory text enabling 
regulation).

The majority’s stance, as I explained last Term, prevents 
Congress  from  doing  its  policy-making  job  in  the  way  it