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Supreme Court Blocks Biden Student Loan Forgiveness, Limits LGBTQ Protections in Final Day of Opinions; Court Says Christian Web Designer Can Refuse to Create Websites for Same-Sex Wedding; Soon: Biden to Announce New Actions on Student Debt. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 30, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:42]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: President Biden today railing against two controversial Supreme Court decisions that came down this morning, one of which nullified a key piece of his economic agenda. And then here in a few minutes, he's going to address the nation about steps that he is taking in response.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: The one his administration has been prepping for all years, the six-three ruling that blocked the student debt forgiveness plan, this now put some 40 million Americans on the hook for those loan payments. The other landmark ruling today the six-three conservative majority again, siding with a Christian business owner who did not want to provide services to same sex couples, essentially ruling in favor of freedom of expression at the expense of LGBTQ protections.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're covering every angle of the story only the way CNN can.

CNN's Ariane de Vogue and PBS White House Correspondent, Laura Barron- Lopez, are here. We also have CNN's Jeremy Diamond at the White House, and Melanie Zanona on Capitol Hill. Also with us, former associate counsel to President George W. Bush and former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Jamil Jaffer.

KEILAR: All right. Ariane, quite a busy week for you. Walk us through first this student loan forgiveness plan of Biden's being scrapped by the court's decision.

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN U.S. SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Absolutely right, Supreme Court moves to block this student loan forgiveness plan was supposed to give relief to millions of borrowers up to $20,000 in the wake of COVID. And Biden said, look, the program was necessary.

He wanted it to give some people some breathing room, so there wouldn't be delinquencies and defaults in the wake of COVID. But these Republican-led states challenged it right away and they said, look, he can't just basically step in and try to erase billions of dollars of debt. He needs congressional authority to do that. And that is where the Supreme Court agreed.

SCIUTTO: The court has shown enormous deference to Congress, right? They oftentimes in these decisions say, hey that's a congressional, that should be a congressional responsibility or it's a state legislature responsibility. We saw that, for instance, on the Dobbs case.

In this case, though, I've heard other folks interpret the law, The Heroes Act that the decision was based on, as Congress wrote the law and gave the president this authority. How do you understand the - how the court defined Congress' role here and does it stand up?

DE VOGUE: Well, that's just what Justice Elena Kagan said, right? She said, look, the court is in here and it is basically ignoring what Congress said. That has been her mantra. But this conservative court at times has been very skeptical of administrative agencies.

They say look, separation of powers, they are not accountable to the people. And they believe that this law was not meant to do what Biden wanted to. It is this big fight, right, between the liberals and the conservatives on the administrative state. And so far with this conservative leaning court with three of President Trump's nominees, the agency's power is being cut back.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Also a big fight between the conservatives and liberals on the issue of LGBTQ rights.

DE VOGUE: Right.

SANCHEZ: Tell us about that decision.

DE VOGUE: Right. Well, that was a big loss. Basically, they ruled in favor of this woman who said, look, I want to create websites to celebrate marriage, but I do not want to create websites to celebrate same sex marriages. She said that violated her religious beliefs, but she also put it in terms of the First Amendment.

She said, I don't want to create a custom product with a message that I don't believe in. And she absolutely won today at the Supreme Court because Justice Neil Gorsuch, again, for a six-three court said, look, this is on First Amendment grounds. The government or Colorado in this case, can't basically force you, right, to give a message, create a custom product with a message that you disagree with. So that was a really, again, closely divided opinion of big win for her.

SCIUTTO: Big impact, sure.

[15:05:01]

KEILAR: Jeremy Diamond at the White House now. We have the President set to speak in just 30 minutes. This is a big day, a big day of defeat, certainly for his agenda and his views. He's not happy, no doubt about these decisions, but it seems perhaps he was prepared for them.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no doubt about it. I mean, listen, this administration maintained publicly that they hoped that the Supreme Court would uphold the President that they were - they felt that they were on solid legal ground. But behind the scenes, officials were very much prepared for this outcome, which was in fact viewed as the most likely outcome that the - this conservative Supreme Court would strike this down.

I'm told that the President this morning shortly after this decision came down, he got all of his senior aides together and he met for several hours in the Oval Office with those aides to finalize how exactly his administration is going to respond. And we're going to hear about those steps from the President at some point this hour.

Now, the President made clear that he thought this program would have been a lifeline to 10s of millions of Americans. But he made clear that he is still going to continue to do what he can to provide that lifeline saying, "I believe that the Court's decision to strike down our student debt relief plan is wrong. But I will stop at nothing to find other ways to deliver relief to hardworking middle class families. My administration will continue to work to bring the promise of higher education to every American."

And the President today - expect him to also outline other steps that his administration has taken to try and address this issue of college affordability. His administration has raised the maximum Pell Grant, for example. He has also forgiven student loans for public service employees, stricken debt from individuals who attended for profit colleges.

So he's going to lean on those steps and he's also, we're told, going to announce some new ones. We don't know exactly what those will be. But again, this impacts millions and millions of Americans, 26 million people had applied for this program. The White House says that they believe that as many as 40 million people would have been eligible for it.

And again, that moratorium on student loan repayments also ends - those payments are going to come due in October. So this is a very urgent issue and we'll hear from the President shortly.

SCIUTTO: Listen, you think how many millions of Americans affected by the collection of these decisions, student loans, that's 40 million Americans, LGBTQ rights, the decision on affirmative action. I mean, it has genuine impact. These are not just cases decided in an ivory tower somewhere.

Jamil Jaffer, if I could go to you, just for folks watching at home who may not be constitutional scholars, help them understand and perhaps me understand as well. When you look at the affirmative action decision and the decision today on this web designer, why can schools not, in effect, discriminate if that's the right word based on racial background, but this web designer based on a freedom of expression argument can make a decision not to do business with someone or put out a message that they consider not in line with their views?

JAMIL JAFFER, FORMER ASSOCIATE COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT BUSH: Right. So what the court is saying here in this case, in the opinion authored by Justice Gorsuch is that the First Amendment protects the right of individuals to not speak in a way that they don't want to, to not be compelled to speak by the state.

Colorado says, you must take anybody who wants a - who wants a website. They tried this earlier with a bake shop, if you recall, and you must serve that that person, you must create the website. These websites, according to the court, in its view, have significant creative expression in them, there are about celebrating things and the like.

And as a result, they can't - the state can't compel the speech of this individual in this case. And so that's sort of the essential part of the holding. It goes back to a long line of cases involving the First Amendment of compelled speech cases. Can you force a student to say this - to say the pledge of allegiance, right? Can the state require somebody to speak in a creative or verbal way and then this court - the court is saying the First Amendment prohibits the state from forcing them to do that on penalty of being put in educational program or being - or facing other types of penalties. And that's the issue, at least, for the majority.

Now, as you know that there's a strong dissent that lays out their side, but that's what the majority at least is saying in this case.

SANCHEZ: There are questions about how this might impact politics moving forward as we saw last year with Roe vs. Wade decision to overturn precedent there. Democrats pounced on that as an issue for the midterms, and there are questions about how both parties might capitalize on these rulings.

So for reaction from Capitol Hill, let's go to Melanie Zanona.

Melanie, what are you hearing from lawmakers now?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes, the reaction has just been pouring in even though Congress is on recess. And not surprisingly, the responses are falling entirely along party lines. Republicans are just thrilled with the outcome here. They are crediting former President Donald Trump with swinging the court in a conservative direction and making these rulings possible. And they are particularly pleased with the decision to block student loan forgiveness program by President Joe Biden.

[15:10:01]

That is something that Republicans in Congress have been fighting against. They've been trying to target it in a number of bills.

But notably, the GOP has been a lot less vocal on the other ruling, which determined that a Christian website designer can deny services to same sex couples. Both Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, were quick to put out statements praising the student loan ruling, but they have yet to weigh in on the gay rights case.

And that just really shows you how this is a tricky issue politically for Republicans. Over the last decade or so, there's been a massive shift in support for gay marriage. And so you could see why Republicans would be more reluctant to weigh in on that case.

Meanwhile, Democrats are just devastated and furious with what has transpired this week. It has just been setback after setback. Democrats now are urging Biden to come up with a plan B for student loan forgiveness. They've also been renewing their calls to reform or pack the Supreme Court and Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, has been particularly outspoken.

He put out a statement saying that the gay rights ruling was both bigoted and hateful. And then he put out in a broader statement expressing concern about the direction of the court. I want to read you part of that statement because it is pretty scathing.

He wrote: "The fanatical MAGA right have captured the Supreme Court and achieved the dangerous regressive policies that they could never attain at the ballot box. This MAGA-captured Supreme Court feels free to accept a lavish gifts and vacations from their powerful, big moneyed friends, all while they refuse to help everyday Americans.

So we'll see how Democrats try to use this as a rallying cry in the next election, but it is clear that this final round of opinions from the Supreme Court bringing a massive disappointment for Democrats while delivering a big victory for the right.

KEILAR: Melanie, thank you for that.

Obviously, this is really going to factor in, even Republicans saying, hey, this might not work to our favor here.

Really interesting, Laura, to point out that it is unclear, there are questions being raised about whether this case with the website was even built on a real request, right? Really interesting questions being raised here.

Lorie Smith, actually, she wasn't someone who was providing wedding websites. She is someone who said she didn't do that, because she feared basically being punished for not providing them to same-sex couples. So she preemptively files his lawsuit before actually expanding her business before she'd actually made a website for same- sex couple.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. And it appears I think that one of the people named in that lawsuit, there was actually a heterosexual man, a (inaudible) gender man ...

KEILAR: Who had no idea --

BARRON-LOPEZ: ... who had no idea and ended up finding out later and he said, no, actually, I'm married to a woman, I'm not ...

KEILAR: I didn't filed this request for a website.

BARRON-LOPEZ: ... right exactly.

KEILAR: What?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I didn't file this at all. So that was stunning to find out. But in the White House's response to this, they're really trying to frame it as part of this larger movement. In the President's statement he said that he's concerned that it's going to invite more discrimination against LGBTQ Americans and framing it as part of this larger movement or growing movement that we're seeing on the right to restrict LGBTQ rights across a number of states. Yes.

SCIUTTO: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. But I'm saying it's just such a good point, because as we know, there are many laws working their way through - with the - it seemed the express intent of trying to whittle down, right, some of these protections here. Is that - are we going to see more cases like this coming forward?

DE VOGUE: Well, the bigger picture here is not so much these protections. But is there going to be a sentiment to whittle away that landmark opinion that cleared the way for gay marriage nationwide.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DE VOGUE: And that is the fear here. That is why they're worried about this particular court.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Which Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas did mention Obergefell as well as the contraception ruling, and those are things that the President has also tries to seize on when they handed down the Dobb's decision is when Clarence Thomas mentioned those, and the President is trying to seize on that and it's going to continue to talk about this overall level of privacy that he says that is being infringed upon for America.

SCIUTTO: It's such a great point, because you look in those decisions for other cases, they mentioned as a possible sense as to what they're going to look at next time around, yes..

SANCHEZ: Absolutely.

And Jamil to you. Part of the question is the precedent that some of these decisions set, specifically the one on LGBTQ rights. And we've been speaking to different advocates for that community, including the president of GLAAD earlier, who argued that this is part of a broader campaign, as Jim described it to erode the rights of same sex couples.

From your perspective, is that the case? Is this a discriminatory campaign?

JAFFER: Look, obviously there's things go out in the variety of states where there are efforts to restrict rights of certain couples, of certain classes of people, those are obviously problematic, and will face their own challenges from a constitutional perspective in the courts and face their own challenges politically in the states in which those things are being considered.

[15:15:06] This case, really, at least as the court framed it is the less about individual's right and more about the First Amendment. And the question about can the state compel somebody to speak, right, under the grounds of equal protection and say, well, people have a right to have access to websites that that websites created? Can you force a content creator to convey a message they don't agree with?

And what the court said here was, this is a First Amendment case. This is not about discrimination. This is about the First Amendment. And there are reasonable disagreements on that. Justice Sotomayor says, no, this case is not about discrimination, it's about people having access to the services. And if they want this person's services, they should be able to get it regardless of what their background is, regardless of what their gender identity is or the like and it's all about how you frame it.

And so in a lot of ways, it's the frame of the question. Is this a First Amendment question, right, the right of the content creator to speak or is this about discrimination, and the inability of these individuals of lesbian, gay, transgender people to get services from a person who gently puts their services out for public consumption?

KEILAR: Laura, how much do you see this court changing the way Americans live their lives? And are they representative of America and what America wants?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, significantly, we've already seen the ramifications of the fall of Dobbs and we're going to continue to see from these other decisions. But I mean, poll after poll shows that, no, they aren't representative of what the general public is.

I mean, a recent NPR-PBS-NewsHour-Marist Poll found that 50 percent of Americans support affirmative action. That was a decision earlier this week. And then 57 percent oppose, this is a Democratic polling firm, but they found that 57 percent of Americans oppose weakening of non discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans.

So in poll after poll, it seems as though they're making decisions that are not in line with the vast majority of the public.

KEILAR: Yes, it's quite the contrast.

Thank you so much to all of you. Such a big day, it's so important to have all of your voices here.

Coming up, minutes from now, we will be hearing from President Biden after these two landmark Supreme Court decisions today, one rejecting, of course, Biden's own student loan forgiveness program, the other limiting the rights of LGBTQ Americans in the name of freedom of speech. We'll be right back with that.

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SANCHEZ: In just minutes, President Biden will address the nation on the next steps his administration is going to take following the Supreme Court's decision to reverse his student loan program.

Joining us now is Natalia Abrams. She's president of the Student Debt Crisis Center.

Natalia, thank you so much for being with us. I understand your organization just held an emergency town hall. What's the reaction that you're hearing from your members today?

NATALIA ABRAMS, PRESIDENT, STUDENT DEBT CRISIS CENTER ABRAMS: Absolute disappointment, terrified, disappointed, disgusted and I echo their feelings. We had Angelina (ph) on who just burst into tears, terrified on how she's going to make payments. I'm glad we were able to give folks that space, but we can only do so much, the President needs to act.

SANCHEZ: What would you like the White House to do? We've spoken to experts who say that his options on executive action are limited.

ABRAMS: They - limited, sure, but we know that the President can use the higher education authorization and he can use many other tools. This was one tool in the toolbox and he made a promise to the American people, to 43 million student loan borrowers that he would cancel student debt and he needs to upheld that promise.

SANCHEZ: Of course, there are a lot of different angles at play here. It's not just the President that has to make that decision. But the Supreme Court specifically said that Congress has to weigh in on this issue. I'm wondering what your message is to lawmakers on Capitol Hill who oppose forgiving student loan debt.

ABRAMS: Well, Congress already gave the President the authority through the higher education authorization to cancel student debt. For people that oppose this, I don't understand why we continue to oppose American people that are just trying to make ends meet, to get ahead in life by getting an education.

Our affirmative action brothers and sisters that have worked so hard on that issue, we have seen this with affirmative action. We've seen this with the LGBTQ. We are not alone in feeling this and GOP lawmakers need to take note that they are harming everyday American people that they claim to protect.

SANCHEZ: I'm also curious about what you would say to borrowers who are now caught in this difficult legal back and forth, and maybe had hoped that this would lead to their debt being forgiven.

ABRAMS: For student loan borrowers out there, we understand today you need to take grace, I'm going to just steal from President Obama after the 2016 election, today take grace, take time for yourself. But tomorrow, we get up and we fight and we continue to get relief out of this White House, out of Congress wherever we can find because borrowers have been suffering for far too long.

This has been a crisis long before the COVID pandemic and it's going to ballooned into an even bigger crisis. We're on the precipice of $2 trillion, something has to be done now. SANCHEZ: So what would you say to critics who argue that simply forgiving student don't - student loan debt would not address the deeper issues that you're talking about, the overall cost of higher education that has ballooned now decades.

ABRAMS: They're not wrong, we can agree that we have to do something about the cost of higher education. That is absolutely one of the major problems in ending the student debt crisis. We need to take down the cost of college and have debt free college.

[15:25:03]

But we also have to understand student loan borrowers have been in the system for 20, 25 years. We might not be able to do it all at once, but we have to do it all.

SANCHEZ: Natalia Abrams, thank you so much for sharing your point of view with us.

ABRAMS: Thank you, Boris. Appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Brianna?

KEILAR: Now, on the other side of the student debt loan forgiveness debate here, Arkansas Attorney General, Tim Griffin, with us now.

Arkansas, of course, one of six plaintiff states the Supreme Court ruled in favor of in this case, sir. Thank you for being with us to talk about this. Two hundred and twenty thousand people from your state applied to this student loan debt relief program. What do you say to them in the wake of this decision?

TIM GRIFFIN, ARKANSAS ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, first of all, I'll say that I - I'm not just here as an elected official. I personally had over a hundred thousand dollars in my own student loans, and I just finished paying them off in my 40s after years, so I understand this intimately.

This for me is not about policy. This is not a discussion of whether we should or should not forgive loans. That's where people get confused. This is about the law. The simple question was not should we forgive the loans. The simple question was and continues to be, does the President have the unilateral authority under The Heroes Act, to forgive the student debt, that's the question that was presented and that's the question that we got an answer to.

I used to be a member of Congress, Congress is where the laws are made. And in this case, we had a law - have a law, The Heroes Act, and what the administration and what the President did was not under - was not allowed - is not allowed under The Heroes Act.

If Congress today with the President wanted to do this, they could do it. When the Democrats controlled all of Congress and the White House, they could have done it. There's a way to do this. But there's a right way and there's an illegal way. And what we heard today is this attempt to cancel debt does not constitute a modification or a waiver, which is allowed under The Heroes Act.

This is a wholesale change, which just can't - there's no good argument to be made under The Heroes Act that this is legal, that's what this is about.

KEILAR: Well, let me ask you ...

GRIFFIN: And I know ...

KEILAR: ... so there is - as part of the debate, there is a question of whether, maybe not before the court, but as part of this broad debate on student loan forgiveness, there is a question about whether this should be forgiven and there have been many Republicans who say, look, this was a payout to a constituency that Democrats were doing.

And there was opposition, as you know, within your party, because of that. I mean, knowing that this will animate potentially Democrats.

GRIFFIN: Sure.

KEILAR: Are you prepared for the political blowback of what this will bring?

GRIFFIN: I'm prepared to do what's right under the law and whatever political blowback comes or doesn't come is really not the issue for me, because I'm the attorney general. I'm not a legislator.

KEILAR: Okay. So then let's talk about ...

GRIFFIN: I'm not a member ...

KEILAR: ... and I respect that, sir.

GRIFFIN: But I will - I'm going to - I want to address your question directly, Brianna. I want to address it directly, because I also think it's a bad idea on policy. My point is not to avoid saying that. My point is to clarify the discussion. This Supreme Court decision is about the law.

Now, we can have a policy discussion, which I'm happy to engage in and I think it's a horrible idea to do this, why? Because I took out loans, many, many, many loans for law school, for grad school for undergrad. And you know what, it took me decades to pay them and I paid them myself.

And I believe when I finished paying them, that I'm done. I don't want and a lot of Americans who paid their loans or paying their loans, they don't want to find out just when they thought they were done paying their loans off, no, you weren't because now you got to pay someone else's loans off.

I mean, I don't know where individual responsibility went, but yes I think it's a bad idea. But I just want to be clear.

KEILAR: Yes.

GRIFFIN: That's not what the Supreme Court decision is about.

KEILAR: No, I understand that. Okay. So then let's talk ...

GRIFFIN: Well, there's a lot of complaining.

KEILAR: ... no, no, I understand.

GRIFFIN: There's a lot of complaining in the news.

[15:30:00]

KEILAR: I understand, but it's all part of the conversation here.

GRIFFIN: A lot of viewers don't understand it.

KEILAR: Let's talk about the law.