Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf
Page Number: 17.0

12 

BIDEN v. NEBRASKA 

Opinion of the Court 

Stat. §80–2804 (1887)—including the power to sue and be 
sued on its own behalf, see HRR Arkansas, Inc. v. River City 
Contractors, Inc., 350 Ark. 420, 427, 87 S. W. 3d 232, 237 
(2002); see, e.g., Board of Trustees, Univ. of Ark. v. Pulaski 
County, 229 Ark. 370, 315 S. W. 2d 879 (1958).  We permit-
ted Arkansas to bring an original suit all the same.  Where 
a State has been harmed in carrying out its responsibilities, 
the fact that it chose to exercise its authority through a pub-
lic corporation it created and controls does not bar the State 
from suing to remedy that harm itself.3 

The  Secretary’s  plan  harms  MOHELA  in  the  perfor-
mance of its public function and so directly harms the State
that created and controls MOHELA.  Missouri thus has suf-
fered an injury in fact sufficient to give it standing to chal-
lenge  the  Secretary’s  plan.    With  Article  III  satisfied,  we 
turn to the merits. 

III 
The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him
the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan princi-
pal.  It does not.  We hold today that the Act allows the Sec-
retary to “waive or modify” existing statutory or regulatory
provisions applicable to financial assistance programs un-
der the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the 
ground up. 

—————— 

3 The  dissent,  for  all  its  attempts  to  cabin  these  precedents,  cites  no 
precedents of its own addressing a State’s standing to sue for a harm to
its instrumentality.  The dissent offers only a state court case involving 
a different public corporation, in which the Missouri Supreme Court said
that the corporation was separate from the State for the purposes of a 
state ban on “the lending of the credit of the state.”  Menorah Medical 
Center v. Health and Ed. Facilities Auth., 584 S. W. 2d 73, 78 (1979) (plu-
rality opinion).  But as the dissent recognizes, a public corporation can 
count as part of the State for some but not “other purposes.”  Post, at 11, 
and n. 1.  The Missouri Supreme Court said nothing about, and had no 
reason  to  address,  whether  an  injury  to  that  public  corporation  was  a 
harm to the State.