this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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The Supreme Court ruled Biden's student-loan forgiveness is illegal, meaning borrowers will resume payments without debt cancellation this year.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Major questions doctrine:

If a law is so broad that it brings about questions on how one should implement it, rather than asking Congress to fix it, SOCTUS gets to dictate what specifically the answer to the question is. But if Congress doesn't like that answer SCOTUS gives, Congress may pass a law being more specific. That is, the Court isn't indicating that the law, ruling, or order is unconstitutional, they are ruling that it is too broad in scope and that SCOTUS is "fixing it" for the time being. But Congress is openly invited to completely override anything they've said.

Now of course, "Major Questions" brings about the obvious. "What is the definition of too broad?" And of course there's all kinds of precedent on that as well and SCOTUS saying "well this is broad, but this isn't broad". Since the WV vs EPA (2022) case, SCOTUS Conservatives have gotten a bit more ..... (and it may shock those that I'm using this word) "liberal" in what they consider "broad". And the liberal justices are more than happy to point this out each and every time to the Conservatives:

It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the “major questions doctrine” magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards.

— Justice Kagan (brutally assaulting and ripping the Conservatives' jugular while dissenting in WV v. EPA (cir. 2022))

So it looks like we're in for a whole lot of "quite a precedent" as the Conservative Justices look posed to whip out the Major Questions doctrine to be allowed to "double think". Major Questions isn't usually used this often and by golly the Conservative Justices seem posed to right that perceived wrong, apparently. And the Liberal Justices have indicated, it's not wise to over use this doctrine. The 6-3 bench isn't forever.