Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 73.0

26 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

cial Congress knew to hold the responsibility for adminis-
tering  the  Government’s  student-loan  portfolio  and  pro-
grams.  See  §1082.    Student  loans  are  in  the  Secretary’s 
wheelhouse.  And so too, Congress decided, relief from those
loan obligations in case of emergency.  That delegation was 
the entire point of the HEROES  Act.  Indeed, the statute 
accomplishes nothing else.

The majority is therefore wrong to say that the “indica-
tors  from  our  previous  major  questions  cases  are  present 
here.”  Ante,  at  23  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted). 
Compare  the  HEROES  Act  to  other  statutes  containing
broad delegations that the same majority has found to raise
major-questions problems.  Last Term, for example, the ma-
jority thought the trouble with the Clean Power Plan lay in 
the  EPA’s  use  of  a  “long-extant”  and  “ancillary”  provision 
addressed to other matters.  West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ 
(slip op., at 20).  Before that, the majority invalidated the
CDC’s  eviction  moratorium  because  the  agency  had  as-
serted  authority  far  outside  its  “particular  domain.”    Ala-
bama Assn. of Realtors, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6).  I 
thought both those decisions wrong.  But assume the oppo-
site; there is, even on that view, nothing like those circum-
stances here.  (Or, to quote the majority quoting me, those 
“case[s are] distinguishable from this one.”  Ante, at 23.)  In 
this  case,  the  Secretary  responsible  for  carrying  out  the 
student-loan programs forgave student loans in a national 
emergency  under  the  core  provision  of  a  recently  enacted 
statute  empowering  him  to  provide  student-loan  relief  in 
national  emergencies.3    Today’s  decision  thus  moves  the 

—————— 

3 The  nature  of  the  delegation  here  poses  a  particular  challenge  for 
JUSTICE  BARRETT,  given  her  distinctive  understanding  of  the  major- 
questions  doctrine.    In  her  thoughtful  concurrence,  she  notes  the  “im-
portance of context when a court interprets a delegation to an adminis-
trative agency.”  Ante, at 2 (emphasis in original).  I agree, and have said 
so; there are, indeed, some significant overlaps between my and JUSTICE