Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

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

11 

Opinion of the Court 

to invoke any other lawful source (if one exists) as grounds
for granting them loan relief.  Their interest is in obtaining 
loan forgiveness in general. 

The  Plan,  however,  is  independent  of  any  student-loan
relief the Department might craft under the HEA (or any 
other  statute).    A  decision  by  this  Court  that  the  Plan  is
lawful would have no effect on the Department’s ability to 
forgive respondents’ loans under the HEA.2  Thus, the Plan 
poses no legal obstacle to the Department’s choosing to find
other  ways  to  remedy  the  harm  respondents  experience
from not having their loans forgiven.

Put  differently,  the  Department’s  decision  to  give  other 
people  relief  under  a  different  statutory  scheme  did  not 
cause respondents not to obtain the benefits they want.  The 
cause of their supposed injury is far more pedestrian than
that: The Department has simply chosen not to give them 
the relief they want.  Ordinarily,  a party’s recourse to in-
duce an agency to take a desired action is to file not a law-
suit, but a “petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal
of a rule.”  5 U. S. C. §553(e).  The denial of such a petition
“must be justified by a statement of reasons,” which in turn
“can be appealed to the courts” if the litigant has standing 
to maintain such a suit.  Auer v. Robbins, 519 U. S. 452, 459 
(1997).  Contesting a separate benefits program based on a 
theory  that  it  crowds  out  the  desired  one,  however,  is  an 
approach for which we have been unable to find any prece-
dent. 

It is true that in procedural-standing cases, we tolerate
uncertainty  over  whether  observing  certain  procedures
would have led to (caused) a different substantive outcome,
as with Lujan’s example of the dam and the bypassed envi-
ronmental impact statement.  See 504 U. S., at 572, n. 7.  In 

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2 We do not opine on the substantive lawfulness of any action the De-
partment might take under the HEA or add anything to our construction 
of the HEROES Act as set forth in today’s opinion in Nebraska.