Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration’s federal student loan debt forgiveness initiative was unconstitutional in a 6-3 partisan decision with a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
This decision was just one of a flurry of controversial rulings, including a gutting of affirmative action in college admissions and a landmark attack on LGBTQ+ rights. These opinions add even more evidence to claims of a strong conservative bent in the Supreme Court, one that leads to rulings founded on ideological leanings more than any sense of constitutionality.
Indeed, this particular decision exposes the partisan bias in the court with glaring clarity. Cases brought before the Supreme Court must establish an actual or imminent injury known as “standing.” However, Republican states have grown emboldened by the current configuration of the court to simply challenge policies they disagree with on little to no grounds.
The plaintiffs in the student loan case lack substantial standing, turning the court into a political cudgel for Republican state legislatures who wish to dispute the Biden administration’s policy without evidencing any actual harm.
The court’s decision to even hear this case, let alone rule on it in the manner they did, exemplifies its lack of institutional integrity and the dangers that come with establishing an unelected group of partisans to have the final say on legal matters that affect the entire nation.
The lack of standing in this case isn’t the only issue. The conservative justices have also exposed their own hypocrisy by striking down student loan relief. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have recently been criticized for receiving sizable gifts from conservative actors outside the court without disclosing them. These donors subsequently received favorable decisions from the court in cases they had explicit involvement or interest in.
In the court’s opinion, the students who will make up the labor force of our country’s future do not deserve any financial relief in the face of crippling debt, while they themselves receive luxury vacations and monetary gifts from uber-wealthy benefactors. There is perhaps no more blatant an example of corruption than this, and yet we are expected to continue to respect the Supreme Court’s decisions as wholly objective and just.
The conservative politicians who laud this recent decision are also largely hypocritical. Many of them, including Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, received thousands to millions in Paycheck Protection Plan loan relief for their associated businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why should their loans be forgiven while their constituents continue to be saddled with monstrous debt simply for pursuing higher education?
Our nation’s priorities are backward. We are focused on making the most privileged and powerful as comfortable as possible while refusing to provide any support to the Americans who have to work hard for a good education and successful careers.
Several other countries subsidize higher education because they understand that such a cost is minimal when compared with the benefits reaped from a well-educated populace and workforce. We live in the wealthiest nation in the world; there is nothing stopping us from doing the same.
Instead, tuition continues to rise — including for out-of-state students at The University of Alabama — and the Supreme Court has taken a big step toward enshrining student debt into law.
The justices who made this ruling received their education for pennies on the dollar by today’s standard. It is easy for Clarence Thomas to say that students should not have their debts forgiven when the average student debt at graduation during his time in school was around four times less than it is today, accounting for inflation. Today, the average student loan debt per borrower is $37,388, with over half of all students being saddled with loans. Between 1970 and 2020, the cost of attending a university leaped by over 2,000%.
Our generation is labeled as lazy when in reality we are being saddled with more student debt than any previous generation, housing prices are immense, income inequality is devastating, and wages have not increased proportionately with inflation. If our generation is to meet its full potential, we must be allowed to receive a quality education without dooming ourselves to lives of paying off loans while the wealthiest of the wealthy reap all the profit of our labor.
Our current configuration of managing the costs of higher education is untenable and harms our economy far more than any debt forgiveness plan ever could. The unelected, corrupt right-wing partisans who now control the highest court in the land have gone out of their way to add yet another roadblock to progress on this issue. Shame on them.
Thankfully, the Biden administration has committed itself to this fight and is looking for alternative paths to lighten students’ burdens. President Biden still has the ability to use the Higher Education Act to continue loan forgiveness before payments resume, and he should.
Do not be mistaken: Student debt is an existential crisis facing American students from this generation forward. We cannot allow our consent to be manufactured, we cannot allow the status quo to persist. Education is a human right, one that should not be attached to any dollar amount — especially not one in the tens of thousands.
