• CrazyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I simply cannot grasp how a judicial system that’s entirely based on standing, suddenly decides that 6 random states that have 0 stake in this whole FEDERAL student loan thing have standing to sue over this forgiveness plan

    • axolittl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s corruption. This isn’t a fluke, it’s that the “justice” system revolves around what’s best for the already powerful elites. It happened because the powerful wanted it to happen, the court just exists to provide the theater to control and placate the masses.

    • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What is also interesting to me is the Supreme Court has rejected pretty much all forms of standing for establishment clause violations.

      You could be a religious Muslim rightfully upset that your local government is making public statements about Jesus being lord and you would have no standing since they wiped out offended observer standing.

      • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The only reason activist judge gets thrown around a lot is because the fascists have been screaming it for several decades while they stack the courts with activist judges. There screams have also caused the other side to fill courts with moderates so they’re not seen as stacking the courts.

    • LordofCandy@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I am really getting tired of many of these cases where they are based on theoretical harm. It’s like my mother-in-law arguing about 5 things that haven’t happened yet. Possible. Probable. Reality.

    • Rodsterlings_cig@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think they threw most of them out for standing, but of course they just needed one. The most bs was the other case they decided where a person pre sued the state since she couldn’t even start a wedding service without the ability to discriminate due to their religious beliefs.

      As others have noted with this court, standing is used when convenient.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Missouri proved they have standing via direct injury:

      “At least Missouri has standing to challenge the Secretary’s program. Article III requires a plaintiff to have suffered an injury in fact—a concrete and imminent harm to a legally protected interest, like property or money—that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct and likely to be redressed by the lawsuit. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561. Here, as the Government concedes, the Secretary’s plan would cost MOHELA, a nonprofit government corporation created by Missouri to participate in the student loan market, an estimated $44 million a year in fees. MOHELA is, by law and function, an instrumentality of Missouri: Labeled an “instrumentality” by the State, it was created by the State, is supervised by the State, and serves a public function. The harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself. The Court reached a similar conclusion 70 years ago in Arkansas v. Texas, 346 U. S. 368.”

      • CrazyDuck@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Except that MOHELA didn’t sue and didn’t want to sue in the first place. No business has a constitutional right to make a profit. If all debtors transferred their loans to a different company tomorrow, MOHELA would go bankrupt and they’d have just as much standing then, I.e. none at all. Furthermore, as I said, MOHELA didn’t sue, the state of Missouri did. MOHELA doesn’t pay a single cent to the state of Missouri, so exactly how is Missouri being injured here? The fact that MOHELA would make less money changes nothing to the “public function” Missouri is supposed to provide here. It can still continue to offer student loans. So I ask again, where is the injury? None of this gives Missouri the state any standing

      • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Like 180 million women in America and they all have less rights than my dead body will and they have no standing meanwhile a corporation that didn’t want to go to court was forced to by parts of the government and they have standing for theoretical harm.

      • xdre@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Missouri proved no such thing.

        Meanwhile, last October, MOHELA admitted in a letter to Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) that its executives “were not involved with the decision of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office to file for the preliminary injunction in federal court.” The Missouri attorney general had to obtain documents from MOHELA through state sunshine law requests in order to use them in the lawsuit. As I wrote last month, if this is successful, “the Supreme Court would be allowing the plaintiffs to win their case thanks to an unwilling conspirator.”

        The internal documents from MOHELA reinforce this. They were obtained through those same state sunshine laws by the Student Borrower Protection Center.

        https://prospect.org/justice/2023-06-19-student-loan-cancellation-supreme-court-mohela/

      • Crimfresh@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        “The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not al-low plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy.
        Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.” Allen v.
        Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 750 (1984). They keep courts acting like courts. Or stated the other way around, they prevent courts from acting like this Court does today. The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. They are classic ide-ological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs. In giv-ing those States a forum—in adjudicating their complaint— the Court forgets its proper role. The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies.”

        They claimed they had standing. All the liberal justices disagree. This was a partisan lawsuit from the beginning and conservative activist judges on the SCOTUS are legislating from the bench with this ruling and ignoring decades of standing precedent.

    • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’m against student loan forgiveness, but I agree. All evidence seems to say that the plaintiffs had no standing. The case should have been thrown out.

      Although I’m happy with the result, the means are not worth the ends. This is a corrupt faction of judges ignoring and applying law where it suits their broader agenda.

        • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          5 bucks says it is either a half remembered article from an economist who works for the student loan people wailing about theoretical inflation or they knew someone with a degree that doesn’t pay well and want to punish them for trying.

          It is always one or the other.

            • Vynlovanth@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              A lot of it is the “fuck you, got mine” mentality too… which goes along with the “they’re just assholes”. Graduated with no debt because they have well off parents but down play the role that possibly could have had. Obviously people who need a loan to get through college nowadays are just lazy right?

              Or “you could have just gone to a cheaper college, this one’s $10,000/year tuition” ignoring that just because you’re in college doesn’t mean you don’t also need to pay rent and buy other necessities… $10,000 is a lot of money for a young adult. That’s half their yearly post-tax income if they could work full time hours at $15/hour.

        • No1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Let me preface this by saying I’m open to being wrong and that I don’t expect others to share these views. I still owe on my student loans and am not excited to continue paying them. Also, I’m listing several reasons here, so even if someone pokes holes in one or two, I’d encourage to see if there are still one or two solid reasons to be opposed to the specific method of student loan payoffs that was ruled unconstitutional.

          1. From the beginning, the Biden administration knew this wasn’t a constitutional way of paying off loans. Their hope was that no one would have standing to bring a suit. In general, I’m not in favor of doing unconstitutional things in the hope we can get away with it. That’s a door I don’t want the Republicans to have access to either.

          2. This program was initially proposed as COVID relief but does nothing to help those most impacted by COVID. It DOES however, help a huge class of potential voters. From the start this hasn’t been about helping people, it’s been about gaining votes.

          3. Paying off existing student loans is an expensive measure that does nothing to address what got us here in the first place. We are paying too much for degrees that don’t provide the benefits and opportunities they once did, and that’s not going to change if we cancel existing debt. All it does is out us right back here in 5-10 years.

          4. There’s a right way to go about this stuff. Congress should be the ones doing this, not the president. Unfortunately we have a congress that would much rather assign their work out to other people to take care of and that’s part of what has gotten us in the mess we’re in in the first place. I prefer a weak Office of the President, as we don’t always have who we want in that office. Sometimes this means things move slower than we’d like, but I’d rather that than letting whoever is president at the time take huge sweeping actions unchecked by Congress and the Judicial Branch.

          Now, just to piss off anyone who wasn’t already upset with me, I think Trump is a crook and I hope he goes to jail for a long time.

          Anyway, I’m not trying to start a fight, just give some reasons why I personally am happy with this SC decision.

          • ElectricCattleman@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m also against loan forgiveness and agree with all your points. Especially number 3. I want to add emphasis that I think forgiveness in this way will actually make the problem worse.

            Yes, it would be a huge help to those who had debts forgiven. However if forgiven once, more people will be likely to go to price-gouging colleges, sign up for the huge student loans, and think there is some chance it will be forgiven later. Colleges will continue to raise tuition because people keep paying it.

            We need to address the tuition cost problem. Colleges are out of control. Until we fix that, anything else will encourage them to keep going. Another way of looking at $500bn of loans forgiven… That’s $500bn in the colleges pockets that they get to keep after tripling their tuition.

            I think college is a great thing and important to be accessible. We need to make it cheap enough that students can afford it and not come out of it with $80k+ in loans (I as did).

          • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago
            1. Not true. The executive branch has the power to not collect a tax or debt. Don’t like it? Then vote for a law change. Good luck with that since this has been the case since before the US even started. In fact what is now the UK waived the land tax on the colonies. It says a lot that to even get standing they had to legally force a corporation to claim damages.

            2. Even if true who cares? Governments serve the population ideally. Would you rather they didn’t give people what they want so things are “fair”? Plus I seriously doubt you were protesting when the banks were bailed out, or the airlines, or the farms, or the banks, or the “small” business owners, or the insurance companies, or the car makers.

            3. When a patient is bleading out you don’t give them a lecture on the importance of safety. You stop the bleeding. ER doctors are not useless because they don’t address root causes.

            4. Again. Congress authorizes the collection of taxes and debt they do not collect. Giving permission is not the same as an order to perform.

            You know I used to be a test engineer which means I was lied to about 30% of my day by PMs who wanted to push things out. A trick I figured out pretty early. When someone is telling me the truth they only need one reason. When they know that they are wrong they give me multiple weak arguments.

            • No1@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              None of what you said is accurate or good arguments.

              1. You’re wrong in this instance, but a lot of people who have votes to gain have been saying this, so I understand why you think that.

              The people saying that the President is allowed to wipe out student loans broadly are based on a misreading of the Higher Education Act of 1965 at 20 USC 1082(a)(6) . https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title31/subtitle2/chapter13&edition=prelim

              The mentioned part of that act provides the provides the president (via the Secretary of Education) with the authority to:

              “…modify, compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand, however acquired, including any equity or any right of redemption.”

              But that quote is taken out of the broader context of the act. The preamble to that section limits the authority to operating within the scope of the statute.

              It means that Congress can authorize a loan forgiveness program, (see Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Teacher Loan Forgiveness or the Total and Permanent Disability Discharge), which then means the U.S. Secretary of Education can forgive student loans as authorized under the terms of those programs.

              Without authorization by Congress of a specific loan forgiveness program, the President does not have the authority to forgive student loan debt. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that all the way back in 2001 in Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc. when they put limits on what exactly Congress can delegate to the executive branch.

              Also, the part of the Act referred to in the preamble is Part B of Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which applies only to loans made under the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program.

              There is similar language in Part E for the Federal Perkins Loan program. There is no similar language for Part D for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) program.

              1. I was protesting when the banks were bailed out. I was also protesting the business “loans” being forgiven. Attacking someone’s argument by building a strawman of who you want the others reading this to believe they are is a logical fallacy.

              2. My point is exactly this. We’re treating a ruptured appendix with Advil.

              3. See point 1.

              • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago
                1. Still wrong. All enforcement of a tax is on the executive. Congress can not force the executive branch to enforce a tax.

                2. Doubt.

                3. I had my appendix out. OTC painkillers were an active part of the process. Sorry your analogy disproves your point.

                4. I won’t. Address it.

                • No1@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  First off, this isn’t a tax going uncollected. The president can’t say 'This thing I want to do is going to now be considered a tax so I can now not collect it." At this point, it’s clear you’re not engaging in good faith, as you’re falling straight back to using character attacks rather than arguments, so have a nice day.

                  • afraid_of_zombies2@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    First off it is. It is exactly a tax. Just because the US government has tried to hire tax farmers to enforce it doesn’t make it not a tax. The president doesn’t have to say anything. There is no mechanism in the legal system to force a president to collect a tax.

                    And at this point it is clear that you are trying to substitute virtue signaling for economic policy. And yes I seriously doubt you protested any other form of government bailout. I would wish you good day but I care about the truth.

        • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Doesn’t address the root problem, in fact it makes the root problem worse. It’s just a one time payout to a lucky group of millenials who happen to qualify at the moment.

          Also, it primarily benefits wealthier people who got college degrees. That money would do a lot more good going to poorer people.