Student loan borrowers stage a rally in front of The White House to celebrate President Biden cancelling student debt and to begin the fight to cancel any remaining debt on August 25, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We the 45m
Advocates are planning to camp out at the Supreme Court the night before the student debt arguments.
One leader of the event told Insider it’s important “the justices look into the eyes of borrowers” as they hear the cases.
The Supreme Court will be taking on the two lawsuits that blocked Biden’s debt relief on February 28.
Advocates want to pack the court — with student-loan borrowers.
In just over a week, Supreme Court justices will weigh whether President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers is legal. It’s been a tumultuous lead-up for millions of borrowers — since the online application for the relief opened in October, 26 million borrowers applied with the expectation that, if approved, their balances would be reduced.
But weeks after the online form was launched, two conservative-backed lawsuits paused the relief’s implementation, leaving the fate of the relief at the hands of the Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide whether the president’s route for relief is legal.
To Democratic lawmakers and advocates, the answer is clear: the relief is legal and should be upheld. And they’re making sure the Supreme Court justices hear — and see — them.
“I think that when people see who is impacted, if they themselves are not, they start to understand that this is about fairness and this is about opportunity, and not ruining someone’s life with decades of unpayable debt just because you’re trying to earn an education,” Max Lubin, CEO and co-founder of Rise — a student and youth-led nonprofit working to make higher education free — told Insider.
“In these kinds of DC fights, oftentimes real impacted Americans, real people are not considered and not present, and they are ignored by either elected, or in this case, appointed decision makers,” Lubin said. “So we’re showing up up in full force.”
Lubin said that his organization alone is planning to bring out around 100 college students from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — all swing states — to the Supreme Court to participate in not only a rally outside the Court on February 28, the day of the arguments, but to camp out overnight to ensure students and borrowers can get a seat in the courtroom.
Melissa Byrne, executive director of We The 45 Million, a campaign of borrowers working to win student-debt cancellation, is leading Supreme Court rallies as well, both the day of the arguments and the night before.
“We’re going to have fun with it in the evening, starting at 6pm,” Byrne told Insider. “With a brass band, mariachi, acapella, people telling their stories, pizza and just to really show and demonstrate that borrowers are just like your neighbors, and that this relief is helping out your communities around the country.”
—melissa “cancelled student debt” byrne (@mcbyrne) February 16, 2023
And Byrne said it’s especially important to bring out borrowers in light of the staunch opposition to Biden’s debt relief. Over the past few weeks, dozens of conservative organizations, former lawmakers, and even former GOP education secretaries have filed amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court saying that broad student-loan forgiveness is illegal and should be struck down.
Republican lawmakers have been arguing that relief at the scale Biden proposed should require Congressional approval, but Biden’s administration has stood by its authority to use the HEROES Act of 2003 to cancel debt, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify balances in connection with a national emergency, and it’s expressed confidence the Supreme Court will rule in its favor.
Advocates hope the same.
“I wanted to make sure that the justices look into the eyes of borrowers while they’re doing the hearing,” Byrne said, adding that “our actions will show that the people with debt are just regular people from around the country.”
“We’re going to move forward and stay in this fight”
The Supreme Court will be taking on two lawsuits that blocked Biden’s debt relief. One was filed by two student-loan borrowers who sued because they did not qualify for the full $20,000 amount of debt relief. Another was filed by six GOP-led states who argued the relief would hurt their states’ tax revenues, along with the revenue of student-loan company MOHELA.
The White House has made clear that it believes the lawsuits are “meritless,” and it said it is not deliberating a backup plan for the relief right now because it’s confident in the legality of Biden’s relief. Lubin agreed that it’s “premature” at this point to be considering alternative scenarios, but he added that “it’s important to be prepared for every scenario.”
“We know that we’re going to move forward and and stay in this fight, irrespective of what the court decides to do,” Lubin said.
Still, some borrowers are nervous of what would come next if the Supreme Court strikes down the relief, especially because student-loan payments are set to resume 60 days after June 30, or 60 days after the lawsuits are resolved, whichever happens first. One borrower previously told Insider that he’s worried “the White House is so desperate to restart payments and get back to normal that they’ve forgotten that ‘normal’ is a decades-long debt sentence; either way, it will be an excuse to say they’d done all the can.”
But getting through oral arguments is first on the agenda — and the White House is confident it’ll go their way.
“It’s simple: our Administration is confident that our student debt relief program is fully legal,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “And we’re not backing down that easy.”