Why Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan might not be doomed after 2 new rulings from conservative Supreme Court justices

• Two recent Supreme Court rulings have struck down cases due to a lack of states' standing to sue.
• They could be indicators of how the high court could rule on student-loan forgiveness.

Another week went by without a Supreme Court decision on President Joe Biden's student-loan-forgiveness plan — but some recent rulings from the high court could be an indicator of how it's handling pending cases.

In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the two lawsuits that paused the implementation of Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers. Two student-loan borrowers brought on one of the cases, US Department of Education v. Brown, because they did not qualify for the full $20,000 of debt relief. The other case, Biden v. Nebraska, was brought on by six Republican-led states who argued the relief would hurt their states' tax revenues and the revenue of the student-loan company MOHELA.

While both parties claimed they would suffer various forms of harm from student-loan forgiveness, the court's decision on the cases could come down to whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue in the first place. To prove standing, plaintiffs have to show that the policy would injure them, that the injury directly traces back to the defendant, and that the relief they're seeking would address those injuries. If they fail to demonstrate those harms, the court will throw out the case.

And that's what the Supreme Court has done with two recent rulings. Last week, the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored an opinion in the case Haaland v. Brackeen, in which the state of Texas was among the petitioners that challenged the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 that allowed Native American children to stay with Native American families in custody battles.

The court ultimately ruled 7-2 that Texas did not have standing to sue. "The issues are complicated," Barrett wrote in the decision, adding, "But the bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners' challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing."

"That should make the issue open and shut," Barrett wrote.

And on Friday, the conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored an opinion in the case United States v. Texas, in which Texas and Louisiana sued the Department of Homeland Security and accused it of violating federal law for prioritizing some non-US citizens who entered the country illegally for arrest and deportation over others. By an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court decided the states lack standing to bring the suit.

"This Court's precedents and longstanding historical practice establish that the States' suit here is not the kind redressable by a federal court," Kavanaugh wrote.

It's clear that both liberal and conservative justices are taking the issue of states' standing very seriously — and it could be a sign of how they might rule on the two major student-loan forgiveness cases, both of which require plaintiffs to prove standing to sue the government over a federal policy.

"If the Supreme Court strikes down student debt relief, it will be a stark deviation from their rulings thus far and further expose the political corruption within this court," Braxton Brewington, spokesperson for the Debt Collective — a union for people in debt — said in a statement. "In Justice Barrett's own words, the ruling for student debt relief should be 'open and shut' in favor of mostly low-income families burdened with the crushing weight of student debt."

How recent rulings are a student-debt-relief indicator

In the United States v. Texas decision, one of Kavanaugh's footnotes directly addresses an argument similar to the one the six GOP-led states made in their case regarding how the student-loan forgiveness would harm their revenues.

"But in our system of dual federal and state sovereignty, federal policies frequently generate indirect effects on state revenues or state spending. And when a State asserts, for example, that a federal law has produced only those kinds of indirect effects, the State's claim for standing can become more attenuated," Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion in the immigration case. "In short, none of the various theories of standing asserted by the States in this case overcomes the fundamental Article III problem with this lawsuit."

During the oral arguments for the student-debt-relief cases in February, Barrett joined liberal justices in scrutinizing whether the states could name the Missouri-based student-loan company MOHELA in the lawsuit even after the company itself denied involvement.

"Why didn't the state just make MOHELA come then?" she asked. "If MOHELA is an arm of the state, why didn't you just strong-arm MOHELA and say, 'You've gotta pursue this suit?'"

Still, James Campbell, a solicitor general for Nebraska who's representing the states, held that Missouri has an "ultimate interest in the property of MOHELA" and that "we believe as a matter of law that the state has the authority to assert its interests."

Even with a critical eye on state standing, conservative justices drilled into potential executive overreach with student-loan forgiveness during arguments, so it's unclear how the high court will rule. A final decision is expected to come by the end of June, and until then, borrowers must wait to learn if they will resume payments in October with any reduction to their balances.