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SC's ruling allows Trump to continue downsizing Dept of Education, yet they refused to allow Biden's student loan relief
Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeckMy quick take on Monday #SCOTUS ruling in the Dep't of Ed. downsizing case—and how the justices' inconsistent treatment of the student loan cases during the Biden administration illustrates in technicolor why the Court really needs to explain its rulings:
The Inconsistent Court Strikes Again
Comparing Monday's unexplained grant of emergency relief in the Department of Education downsizing case to how the justices handled President Biden's student loan program is ... telling.
___As folks may recall, the student loan case first reached the Court on a pair of emergency applications from the Biden administration—to vacate nationwide injunctions against the program that had been imposed by the Eighth Circuit (in a suit brought by a number of red states) and the Northern District of Texas (in a suit brought by private plaintiffs), respectively. In both cases, one of the administration’s central arguments for emergency relief was that the government was likely to prevail on the merits because the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing (that is, they weren’t injured by the policy they were seeking to challenge)—and that the standing obstacle was reason enough to allow the government to continue to implement its policy.
In both cases, the Court deferred its resolution of the applications while it considered the merits of the government’s appeals—rulings that had the effect of keeping the program on hold for an additional 6.5 months. After argument, the Court held (unanimously) that the private plaintiffs lacked standing; and it held 6-3 that one of the states had standing (in analysis I heavily criticized at the time). In other words, the Court kept a controversial Department of Education policy initiative paused for 6.5 months while it sorted out whether anyone had standing to challenge it—rebuffing the President’s request that the policy go back into place in the interim.
Contrast that with Monday’s ruling. In asking the justices to stay the district court’s injunction against the mass firings and restructuring of the Department of Education, the Trump administration’s principal argument was not that those measures were legal, but that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing to challenge them. The best explanation for Monday’s ruling is that a majority of the justices agree that the government is likely to prevail on its standing argument—and, as has been the case so often in the Court’s recent approach to emergency applications, gave short shrift to the equities.
If that’s true, then we have this rather obvious contrast—where serious standing objections were not enough to justify emergency relief when it was the Biden administration looking to put its student loan debt relief plan back into effect, but where (to my mind, weaker) standing objections were enough to justify allowing the President to effectively strangle a critically important federal agency (and to defeat the various acts of Congress standing that agency up and giving it responsibilities it will now struggle to discharge)....
read more: https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/167-the-inconsistent-court-strikes
Comparing Monday's unexplained grant of emergency relief in the Department of Education downsizing case to how the justices handled President Biden's student loan program is ... telling.
___As folks may recall, the student loan case first reached the Court on a pair of emergency applications from the Biden administration—to vacate nationwide injunctions against the program that had been imposed by the Eighth Circuit (in a suit brought by a number of red states) and the Northern District of Texas (in a suit brought by private plaintiffs), respectively. In both cases, one of the administration’s central arguments for emergency relief was that the government was likely to prevail on the merits because the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing (that is, they weren’t injured by the policy they were seeking to challenge)—and that the standing obstacle was reason enough to allow the government to continue to implement its policy.
In both cases, the Court deferred its resolution of the applications while it considered the merits of the government’s appeals—rulings that had the effect of keeping the program on hold for an additional 6.5 months. After argument, the Court held (unanimously) that the private plaintiffs lacked standing; and it held 6-3 that one of the states had standing (in analysis I heavily criticized at the time). In other words, the Court kept a controversial Department of Education policy initiative paused for 6.5 months while it sorted out whether anyone had standing to challenge it—rebuffing the President’s request that the policy go back into place in the interim.
Contrast that with Monday’s ruling. In asking the justices to stay the district court’s injunction against the mass firings and restructuring of the Department of Education, the Trump administration’s principal argument was not that those measures were legal, but that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing to challenge them. The best explanation for Monday’s ruling is that a majority of the justices agree that the government is likely to prevail on its standing argument—and, as has been the case so often in the Court’s recent approach to emergency applications, gave short shrift to the equities.
If that’s true, then we have this rather obvious contrast—where serious standing objections were not enough to justify emergency relief when it was the Biden administration looking to put its student loan debt relief plan back into effect, but where (to my mind, weaker) standing objections were enough to justify allowing the President to effectively strangle a critically important federal agency (and to defeat the various acts of Congress standing that agency up and giving it responsibilities it will now struggle to discharge)....
read more: https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/167-the-inconsistent-court-strikes
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