America is still arguing about Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Court, which will permanently change the selection of students at universities, as the next contested decisions are already to follow. Both are fueling further, bitter debates in this divided country: one Supreme Court decision restricting LGBTQ rights, the other halting Joe Biden’s attempt to waive more than $400 billion in student debt from their college days.
This Student Loan Forgiveness Plan is one of the most important programs of the Biden administration, the case affects more than 20 million people. Many of them are potential voters for the Democrat in the White House. It would be one of the most expensive projects ever undertaken by the American government. The US President wanted to spare those affected the repayment of between 10,000 and 20,000 dollars, depending on their income. In this way you could start to free yourself from the mountain of debt, said Biden in the summer of 2022. Now the top rule-keepers are also intervening in this matter.
Biden wants to announce new measures
Six Republican-governed states (Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina) and two individual plaintiffs had sued, the arch-conservative majority of the judges agreed with them by 6:3 votes. The day before, universities had banned the decades-old practice of awarding some places on the basis of skin color with the same ratio, in order to primarily promote otherwise disadvantaged black people.
The latest ruling weighs on the less affluent segment of the population: supporters of Biden’s plan before the Supreme Court on Friday.
(Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP)
This decision also burdens the less affluent part of the population, whose young women and men can only afford expensive education at a high level by borrowing a lot of money. In total, more than 45 million people owe $1.6 trillion in student debt, roughly the economic output of Brazil or Australia. Judge John Roberts writes in his reasoning that such debt relief requires clear authorization from Congress.
That’s difficult at the moment, because the Republicans, including many hardliners, have been in control of the House of Representatives since the US midterm elections. For Joe Biden, the vote is a defeat in the forthcoming election campaign for 2024, in the spirit of his rivals, Donald Trump in the lead. However, Biden wants to announce new measures in a speech later on Friday. “The fight is not over yet,” he says. “Breathtaking” is the hypocrisy of the elected representatives of the Republicans. They would have no problem with waiving loans for companies from the pandemic period. “But when it came to helping millions of hard-working Americans, they did everything in their power to prevent it.”
Yet another judge’s decision from Friday is highly controversial
The court behaves as if it were an arbiter of political disputes and not of cases and controversies, criticizes the liberal judge Elena Kagan of her colleagues. The Supreme Court is overstepping its proper role and is a threat to democracy.
The first verdict on Friday morning American East Coast time is also controversial, to say the least, and was also decided with 6:3 votes. It was about a lawsuit filed by an evangelical web designer from Colorado who doesn’t want to make websites for gay couples’ weddings. The Supreme Court agreed with her.
According to the reasoning, no one can be forced to do so in view of the First Amendment. In her counter-opinion, Judge Sonia Sotomayor writes: For the first time in history, the court has granted a public company the constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected group. She, like Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, voted against it. “Today,” Sotomayor said, “is a sad day for American constitutional law and for the lives of LGBTQ people.” President Biden is “deeply concerned that the decision could lead to further discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.”