U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘major questions’ test may doom Biden student debt plan
(Worthy News) – Millions of Americans are in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court as it hears arguments next Tuesday in appeals by President Joe Biden’s administration of lower court rulings blocking his plan announced last August to cancel $430 billion in student debt.
Legal experts said Biden’s program, intended to ease the financial burden on debt-saddled college-educated Americans like Hayes but criticized by Republicans as an overreach of his authority, may be scrutinized by the court under the so-called major questions doctrine. Its 6-3 conservative majority has employed this muscular judicial approach to invalidate major Biden policies deemed lacking clear congressional authorization.
The major questions doctrine is an outgrowth of an approach favored by many conservatives and business groups to curb what they call the excesses of the “administrative state.” They object to what they see as accumulated power by the U.S. government’s executive branch without proper checks by the courts and Congress. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]