Yahoo Finance Supreme Court highly unlikely to grant taxpayers' request to block Biden debt relief
A new challenger is vying to derail the Biden administration’s student loan debt relief plan by asking the nation’s highest court to stop the cancellation from taking effect.
On Wednesday, the Wisconsin-based tax policy advocacy group, Brown County Taxpayers Association, filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to temporarily block the government from giving away what it says are assets belonging to U.S. taxpayers.
“If this program goes forward as planned on Sunday then the president will unilaterally spend roughly 4% of the nation’s GDP,” the association wrote in its emergency application for the injunction. "Such a blow to the U.S. Treasury, which some estimates say could surpass $1 trillion, would unfairly harm taxpayers."
While the group asks the court to suspend debt relief until the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals considers its lawsuit to block the plan — a suit that was dismissed by a lower court — constitutional law experts say there’s little chance, at this stage, the Supreme Court will get involved.
'Taxpayers — they don't have standing'
“There is virtually no chance that the Supreme Court will intervene in this case,” University of Texas Law School professor Stephen Vladeck said. That’s because the challenge is based on taxpayer standing, an argument that Vladeck explains the Supreme Court has all-but discredited.
The concept of standing — the requirement that petitioners must have a specific interest in the case — has frustrated other litigants who have also tried to challenge the administration's debt relief plan. The Supreme Court has long rejected potential harm to all taxpayers as enough to meet the test.
"Taxpayers — they don't really have standing," Kelly J. Deere, assistant professor of law at Rutgers University, told Yahoo Finance.
In pleading with the court, the taxpayers acknowledge the stumbling block that standing presents. A case filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation failed over a lack of standing after the government implemented a rule allowing borrowers to “opt-out” of the relief plan. The administration argues in a separate case filed by six states that state-operated loan service agencies also lack standing.
Still, the group argues that it has standing under a 1968 Supreme Court ruling, which the Brown County Taxpayers Association interprets as giving taxpayers standing if the federal government "usurps congressional spending powers." According to the petitioners, President Biden overstepped his executive authority in an unconstitutional reach into the spending powers delineated to Congress.
They also object to the administration’s use of the 2003 HEROS Act as justification for the new debt relief, arguing that the act was intended not for a national emergency like the COOVID-19 pandemic, but to help economically disadvantaged military families and first responders who put their education and careers on hold to serve the U.S. during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“But these student loan borrowers have not been disadvantaged by their service to the county, or for that matter anything at all,” the taxpayers said.
The application to the Supreme Court is directed to Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is responsible for applications that arise out of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Justice Coney Barrett may issue a decision on the request unilaterally, or take the matter to a vote by the full court.
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed.
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