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Supreme Court Blocks Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Program, Limits LGBTQ Protections in Final Day of Opinions. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 30, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. And Christina, just looking at some of the statements coming in from top Republicans on this, John Thune putting out a statement, and I'm seeing the way he's talking about it is very similar to the other Republican reaction coming from Capitol Hill is talking about the plan that Biden had put forward, was an unserious scheme to force 87 percent of Americans who do not have student loan debt to bear the costs of the 13 percent of Americans who do so.

He says anyone frustrated by today's decision should direct their complaints to the White House, where they knew this executive order would likely be struck down by the courts, but they did nothing whatsoever to meaningfully address exorbitant costs in higher education, and the exorbitant costs in higher education is something that we've talked about so many times whenever this has come up, because this is the way that I often described as is any of these efforts is really just a band aid over a gaping wound, which is the cost of higher education is too high.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and you know, there's this term moral hazard, you know, is it moral hazard to just wipe out the debt and not address the fact that you've got look at, you know, a private non-profit for your colleges, almost $58,000 a year, even a public in State College is now up to $30,000 a year. There's really nowhere in the economy where you've seen inflation for something that is so necessary for so many people to enter the middle class that inflation is almost it just runaway inflation in terms of the cost of college.

So that is definitely an underlying problem. But I think it's interesting, some of the other responses from Republicans, and there are Democrats, too, who agree, they just kind of don't understand the fairness of, you know, I sent my kid to a state school because that's what we could afford. So why as a taxpayer, am I, you know, am I subsidizing someone else who maybe got a major that was very expensive, and an industry that doesn't, you know, have a lot of jobs?

Like, what how should taxpayers subsidize the choices people are making? It's also the only thing you guys and I've covered this for years, it's the only debt that we allow people to take on without judging whether they have the ability to pay it back, right, you can just get as much of this debt as you want. And so we need to do a better job on the front end of not only the cost of college, but understanding how much it's going to cost to pay for it.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Christine, Romans, thank you very much. With us now was Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Look, there was a cost to the government for this plan that President Biden had proposed. What is your reaction to the Supreme Court ruling today?

MARC GOLDWEIN, SENIOR VP AND SENIOR POLICY DIRECTOR, COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET: Well, I think what the Supreme Court told us today is the President can't spend $400 billion of the taxpayer money on his own without Congress. And that's a good thing he shouldn't be able to.

BERMAN: What do you say to those borrowers out there who either had been anticipating this relief and or need some kind of assistance here based on their economic situation?

GOLDWEIN: You know, look, I feel for them, the President made an empty promise that he couldn't keep using authority he didn't have. And I left a lot of these folks behind. What I hope we do next is work on a bipartisan basis, the President and Congress to come up with a plan that truly fixes income driven repayment, that gets college costs under control. And that focuses on quality and accountability, because that's really missing from this whole debt cancellation scheme.

BOLDUAN: Marc, is it -- is -- when it comes to how this landed, part of the legal argument came down to how big this package was. I mean, this was 400 plus billion-dollar program that President Biden was working -- work towards here. Is that the issue for you? Is it the sheer size of it? Or is it just on its most basic level, just canceling debt at all? You think that's the wrong way to be approaching this problem?

GOLDWEIN: Well, I think we ought to be having targeted forgiveness as part of income driven repayment. But this plan is costly. It adds to inflation, which means it's basically adding costs for 87 percent of Americans, it's regressive. Most of the benefits go to the top half of the public. And again, Congress has the authority to spend, not the president, if the president can spend as much as he wants or cut taxes as much as he wants without Congress. Where does it end?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: I want to ask you a quick question about this. Because this happened, unlike, you know, when I was in school, or unlike when other folks were in school who may have had student loans and paid them off, COVID showed up and created havoc. And part of this was because of that trying to help people deal with an emergency. Do you think there is ever a case, ever any kind of emergency that a president should have this kind of power to say I have to help the people who are suffering very much from something that we just could not see happen?

[11:05:03]

GOLDWEIN: Well, I think the President had in us the authority to pause student debt payments early in the COVID emergency. And that made sense, at least in 2020. But by the time this debt cancellation scheme was announced, the unemployment rate was about 2 percent. Among college graduates, right now student debt is has fallen actually 10 percent relative to income. So the idea that most students are worse off as a result of the pandemic isn't true if to count for the $6 trillion of support, we've given them through other means.

BERMAN: All right, Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director of the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, thank you so much for being with us. Let's just remind people where we are this morning and everything that's just happened in the last hour, the Supreme Court has issued two major decisions. The first one from Colorado has to do with a wedding website designer, the court ruled she does not have to design websites for same sex marriages.

They rule that her first amendment rights would be violated by forcing her to do so you cannot be forced, the court says, to engage in expressive activity, if you do not believe in it. And then the other ruling, which we were just talking about, the Supreme Court, just flat out overthrew President Biden's student loan forgiveness program. All right, I'm now told we're going to go back to Jessica Schneider, who is at the Supreme Court to bring us back up to speed on this momentous day. Jessica?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: And John, what these two cases really show in particular, both in writing and on the bench is the stark division in this court, the six-three court that is in these two decisions, in particular, starkly conservative, versus liberals. We've heard from the justices today on the bench. And notably, for the second day in a row, we're hearing a liberal Justice read a dissent from the bench. That's something that doesn't often happen, but has in the past two days, yesterday with affirmative action, and today with these two decisions.

So, two major decisions, indeed, the court blocking, rejecting President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, and also saying that a wedding website designer in Colorado does not have to service same sex couples. Now what exactly do these decisions mean? Well, first of all, the Biden administration will not be able to put into effect their loan forgiveness program. It had been blocked by lower courts. It continues to be blocked.

So now 40 plus million Americans will not get that loan forgiveness, at least in the current form of the plan that the administration had tried to put into place. And the Supreme Court here saying this is an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that while the Heroes Act does allow for some measures to be taken in regard to student loans in times of emergencies, they say this Court says that the statute does not allow the administration to go this far and cancel what amounts to $400 billion plus in debt. So that is the crux of that case.

As for the same sex wedding website case, that case was written by Justice Gorsuch again, coming down six to three. And that says that basically the Colorado law that said that you can't discriminate against same sex couples that violated this website designers free speech, because in a sense, it compelled her to speech -- to speak to -- by way of servicing these particular clients.

I mean, I want to read to you just part of the dissents here. So Justice Kagan wrote a dissent in the student loan case, Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissent in the wedding website case, both very stinging, I'll read for you first Justice Kagan's when she talks about the student loans, and then striking down Biden's plan. She says in every respect, the court today exceeds its proper limited role in our nation's governance. The courts first overreach in this case is deciding it at all disputing standing.

And then she goes on to say the court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversy. So again, really hitting hard at the conservative majority here. And then we heard again, from Justice Sotomayor on the bench for the second day in a row reading her dissent, or notably, she said at the end, I dissent rather than the typical, I respectfully dissent.

And she says in part here that the opinion of the court is quite literally a notice that reads some services may be denied to same sex couples. And then she goes on to warn that potentially this could lead to business owners, creative services types, refusing to service interracial couples, for example. Now, the conservative majority did strike this idea down in a footnote, Justice Gorsuch pushed back saying, our decision today does not concern much less endorse anything like straight couples only that the dissent conjures out of thin air.

But you can really see, again, both on the bench and in paper, the real divisions of this court, the tensions of this court finally bubbling over. This has been a term where a lot of the cases we've seen so far have had members of the liberal side maybe working with the conservative side. But these last two days we have seen this stark divide when it comes to affirmative action. And now same sex rights, gay rights, and also when it comes to the administration's power to forgive student loans, guys.

[11:10:24]

BERMAN: Yes, Jessica, no doubt this absolutely shows the tension inside the court. What these days, this week also shows and the tension has an impact inside of that courtroom, maybe create some discomfort there. What the court rules has an impact around the entire country. And what we have now seen by six-three margins, is the judicial ideology of this court firmly stated. One law professor told me last night, we are now in a YOLO Supreme Court and you only live once Supreme Court moment, which for conservatives, they are rejoicing.

And obviously, for liberals, they are not. But this is a moment where conservatives are getting what they want on major, major issues, starting from Dobbs to affirmative action and now to today.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I think it's an important moment to stop and sort of reflect on where we are with the Supreme Court. This is the end of the term by the way. This will be the last of the full decisions, there may be emergency decisions. This term gave us a couple of really surprising cross ideological opinions, particularly in the area of voting rights, where we had in one case, Justice -- Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett and another case, those two minus Barrett coming over joining with the liberals, first to uphold a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

And then just earlier this week to reject this sort of really radical what we call independent state legislature theory. However, we had a healthy portion of sort of predictable ideology line six to three decisions. We had the affirmative action decision yesterday. We have the two today. We also had a series of cases involving religious freedom and first amendment rights, sometimes pitted against anti- discrimination laws that almost uniformly went in favor of First Amendment and religious rights.

The other thing that I think is worth reflecting on is just how much power we give Supreme Court justices. These justices outlast presidency, after presidency. Justice Clarence Thomas, longest serving member of the court. He was confirmed in 1991. He has now served during six different presidencies, right, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden.

And so it's worth remembering this when these vacancies come up, in some respects, they have -- these Supreme Court justices possess more power than any other person in our government. And we're reminded of that now.

SIDNER: The new justices also will be around potentially for 50 years.

HONIG: And they're and they're making them younger and younger, it's almost becoming a requirement now. If you look at Justice Jackson, the three Trump nominees were all low, 50s and younger. And I think that's why.

BOLDUAN: Let's go over to Steve Vladeck, for some reaction on all of this, Steve, yours is one of the many Twitter accounts I always watch on Supreme Court day, your react -- well, let's start with today, but also, what you think of and how you reflect on where we end up at the end of this very huge term today.

STEVE VLADECK, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, I think power is exactly the right way to think about this. And it's the amount of power that the court is claiming to insert itself into basically every kind of decision in American life. I mean, let's just take the two cases from today. You know, the decision in the Colorado website case now means that any business owner anywhere in the country can at least try to defend exclusionary behavior on the ground that what they do is expressive, that's going to open the floodgates to first potentially misbehavior by businesses and second, a ton of litigation.

But also don't sleep on the student loan case, like whatever folks think of the student loan program, as such, by allowing Missouri to challenge it, and by applying this major questions doctrine does strike it down. What the Supreme Court is really doing is it's transferring power from the political branches to the courts, because now any federal district judge anywhere in the country can look at any federal policy, and say, I believe this is a program of quote, vast political or economic significance. What isn't?

And I don't think Congress has acted specifically enough to authorize it. Guys, it's open seats it. Now when it comes to federal programs, not just new and controversial ones, like the student loan program, but long standing ones like Medicare. And I think that's a really remarkable moment for this court at this juncture to be in, to be taking all of this power, guys, not just for itself, but for the federal judiciary writ large.

BOLDUAN: Steve, that's a really interesting point and how far the far reaching implications now from the student loan case not just in this one area stick with us for a second, Steve.

[11:15:04]

SIDNER: Laura Coates, I want to get to you to just take a moment to pause to think about what this means overarchingly for the country, as the court has really changed things, some things that have been in place for 40 years like affirmative action. And they're making these big changes that will trickle down and affect many of us, if not all of us. What is your take on what this court's decision means over the last few days?

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, taken collectively, this notion that precedent is a long standing tradition by which we can order all of our lives really is now gone. The idea that you expect to have when a Supreme Court rules on a case that it will have a foundational and transformational impact, that's long lasting really is no more. As Steve alluded to, the Open Season aspect on certain areas of the law in questions, it really means that many things perhaps we all took for granted as sacrosanct, as things that would be able to order our lives around might no longer be the case.

And that's very, very concerning for so many people have come to rely on the way we legislate as a result of Supreme Court authority and opinions, how people conduct admissions operations, how people also are able to at the state level enact and implement laws that they believe to be in line with prior Supreme Court precedent.

All of these things are really being transformed. And we find ourselves after many years are talking about the wild, wild west, or things of a novel moment, or uncharted territory. Never did many people think that would be with the Supreme Court. And yet, here we are. And I'll say when you think about all of this, collectively, how often we've heard this term are from the Supreme Court to suggest or is there some line that's included in a written opinion that says, by the way, nothing we've said here should be construed to mean the opposite of what we're saying here or involve and invoke other aspects of our society in life.

That caveat that is always there is a blaring reminder, essentially saying, look, everything we are saying we are aware, will be construed, may be construed, might be construed in the long run, to try to subvert some other principle. And so here we are, in a kind of novel territory, wondering what precedent will really mean, and what's the next to potentially be on the chopping block. Now, the Supreme Court, of course, has done itself no favors in the grand scheme of things of trying to ensure they are viewed as completely apolitical. And yet we have a vested interest societally to have the Supreme Court of United States, you know, enrobed, as they are to be above politics, and oftentimes above the type of reproach or accountability that leaving the lower courts of the same branch and Article Three courts experience.

And so we have a bit of a reckoning on the way in terms of how the political body views the court, how litigants view the court, how the society will view the court and how lower courts will now structure their opinions in line with this.

BERMAN: Well, look, there's no question that the public view of the Supreme Court is much different than it has really ever been in, in some cases, much lower. But it has always been the role of the Supreme Court to make decisions that have, as we said yesterday, a generational impact on our society. When they weigh in on something, it changes things for a long time, and they are big things, by definition. And Steve Vladeck, because you watched this so closely, I'm not throwing you a curveball, but based on all the big items that the court has ruled on, in the last, you know, 14 months at this point, if you are a conservative, you're in the federal society, you know, what's left on your wish list here because you're getting a lot of what you want so far.

VLADECK: Yes, I mean, gosh, it's not a curveball. It's just a scenario I don't really want to play out in my head. But the, you know, I think we're already seeing some aggressive moves by a number of red states to interfere with the rights of transgender individuals to deny trans gender affirming medical care, to especially children, I think that's going to be something that gets litigated up to the Supreme Court in the coming months.

But, you know, I think the real problem with how active the court has been isn't any particular wish list is that now everything becomes unstable. I mean Morris so right about how the destabilizing effect of these rulings is perhaps the most important theme, because now this will enable and it will incentivize folks to bring lawsuits they might not have brought five or 10 years ago, folks to test out legal theories.

They might not have thought had a shot at succeeding five or 10 years ago because guys it's not just the bottom lines of these cases. You know I hate to be the nerdy law professor here. But the court is reaching out to get to these bottom lines, in cases where there are pretty serious objections to whether these are even proper parties, the website designer case, whether Missouri had standing on a student loan case.

[11:20:20]

What that means is the Supreme Court is signaling to lower courts and to conservative activists, that we are going to stretch our procedural rules to reach substantive outcomes that you might want us to reach. Therefore, you have nothing to lose in going into your nearest friendly district court and trying new things out. The worst thing that happens is you lose in the Supreme Court, and if the last couple of weeks have taught us anything, yes, they're going to lose some, but they're also going to win some.

That's the real issue here is just how much this puts everything back on the table that we have for so long taken to be a given and how we structure our society.

BOLDUAN: So interesting, I really am still stuck on what you're saying about what the court is doing these decisions with regard to presidential power are just that the power from the political branches and putting them into the courts, I think is something we need to continue examining. Steve, Elie, stick with us. Is Joan ready now guys, let's -- I want to bring in if we can, great, Joan Biskupic is back with us. Joan, just like yesterday, you were in the court again today, as these final major decisions were coming down, take us inside the court and tell us what you saw.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Sure. And I didn't mean to sound so breathless. But it did just end a few minutes ago, and I got slipped over here. Again, this time it went for more than an hour. And what was interesting, and I'll start with the ruling in the religious rights versus LGBTQ interests, because two very different portraits of the facts of the case and rights in America were drawn by two justices sitting right next to each other.

You know, they're all arrayed up on the mahogany bench and you had Justice Neil Gorsuch begin by talking about the religious rights at issue here for a woman who said her free speech was impinged because she would didn't want to, she felt like she would be forced to create a wedding website for same sex couples. And what he stressed was that this she was not going to discriminate against the couples based on their status. She wanted to foreclose that option based on the fact that she did not want to articulate speech.

So everything that Justice Gorsuch drew out, as he presented his side of the case, his winning side of the case had to do with free speech. He talked about instances when the court had said that, no, students could not be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance or to salute the flag. And no, government could not stop the Nazis from marching in Skokie, because that was part of their free speech rights. Everything that he referred to here, including a veteran's parade that wanted to keep out banners and marchers who were going to tell gay rights, that's the kind of context he drew here.

And in part to get ahead of what the dissenter Sonia Sotomayor sitting right next to him was about to say, he reminded the audience sitting in the courtroom about the Bostock ruling that he had actually written back in 2020. And that was a case in which he was with the majority to expand LGBTQ rights in the workplace. So he wanted to carefully distinguish what was being precluded here.

And then when it came time for Justice Sotomayor, to speak on the part of the dissenters, only the three liberal justices, as I'm sure you've already laid out, she said this case is not about speech. It's about conduct and it's about status. It's about allowing a website designer to put out a sign to say same sex couples need not to come here. And she drew a contrast to all that Justice Gorsuch had laid out over several minutes as he opened the proceedings with detailing what the justices had done in this case by saying, look at how this fits into the history.

And she also referred to the most recent histories, she said, look at how much has changed in just five years. When justices of this court long gone now, Justice Kennedy, she was referring to said that retailers and businesses cannot exclude individuals just because of their status. And again, she was removing this case from the pure free speech realm that Justice Gorsuch was casting it and same if the court allows this kind of discrimination lacks the public accommodation law that Colorado has this could lead to other kinds of discrimination.

[11:25:10]

And the cases she invoked all had to do with very serious discrimination, including one from way back when before the Civil Rights era, in which I think it was Ali's barbecue, I know it was a barbecue stand, wouldn't serve black customers at tables would only allow them to come to the window of the establishment. And she said, it's as if this Laurie Smith, in this case, who wants -- who runs his 303 Creative Enterprise will only sell at the side counter.

So a very dramatic rendering and very disparate rendering of what was what the facts of the case were in the law at issue. And the whole time that Justice Sotomayor was reading excerpts of her dissent. Neil Gorsuch is sitting right next to her instead of just tilting his head toward her as often happens, he looks straight at her, you know, not flinching at all. And I'm sure he was, you know, quite firm in what he believed and quite firm in the majority that he was able to get for this case to side with this woman, who I should remind everyone has not in any way been sanctioned by the state of Colorado, has not been found in any way to be not abiding by the state's Public Accommodations law, who had brought this case as what's known as a pre enforcement challenge.

So in so many ways, this case was sort of created out of facts that don't quite fully exist yet. And that was another thing that Justice Sotomayor pointed up. And then, would you like me to go on? Should I go to the next case, when the chief starts talking?

BERMAN: You're the one who was in the room. You were the one who was there.

BISKUPIC: OK, great. You know, I just have to say, for this last day, you just saw all the tensions on so many issues. You know, this was a culture war issue that I just played out on, you know, same sex couples versus the Christian owner of an establishment who just feels like she has a right, she has a free speech right, not to adopt the message of a same sex couple. It's all part of the culture wars. And just one quick PS on that, Justice Sotomayor when she was talking about why this was so wrong, why the court was, in her words profoundly wrong, she referred to the kind of discrimination that gays and lesbians face right now. And, you know, the kinds of, you know, movements we've seen in the states, she referred to state laws that are right now just being created across the country that could allow discrimination against gay rights. And she said at this kind of time, what is the Supreme Court do, it shrinks back from duty to protect people and instead signals that these people's rights are not in need of protection, so I -- just to close out kind of the drama of that.

And then to sort of point up, the why expanse of how this Supreme Court is affecting American life and the powers of government. Chief Justice John Roberts, then is going to detail exactly why the Secretary of Education was wrong, to try to provide loan forgiveness to millions of borrowers in the wake of COVID. And in that case, first of all, there was a real issue whether the six Republican states that had challenged this even had a right to do it, and he brushed back some concerns there about whether Missouri even could do it.

You know, he had such a brisk voice and tone that it was in contrast, certainly two Justices Gorsuch and Sotomayor. But he just cut to the chase and said, there was an injury here, there was legal standing on the part of the state of Missouri to bring this case. And then when he got to the nub of the whole thing, he said, something that will have reverberate reverberations in so many areas of regulation and protections for people that government wants to protect an environment, student loans, health welfare.

He said that the Secretary of Education went beyond what Congress wouldn't want to do at all in this matter, as I'm sure has been spelled out by other legal analysts here. You know, the Secretary of Education, working under emergency provisions of this law said that these student loans could be forgiven up to $20,000. And Justice Kagan then, in her dissent, says look at what this Court is doing. It's not quite reading the statute correctly.