Chief Justice Roberts Cites Nancy Pelosi In Decision Striking Down Biden’s Student Loan Cancellation: ‘That Has to Be an Act of Congress’

Chief Justice John Roberts cited an unlikely ally, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in his majority opinion in Biden v. Nebraska invalidating President Joe Biden’s unilateral student debt cancellation program.

Roberts and the 6-3 majority he wrote for decided that a policy change as sweeping in its magnitude as Biden’s student debt cancellation program must have clear congressional authorization. To support that claim, he reminded readers of Pelosi’s declaration at a July 2021 press conference:

People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.

This is one of my favorite excerpts: pic.twitter.com/9rrU6mDinm

— Tom Sabanick (@sabagnic) June 30, 2023

The Biden administration argued that the HEROES Act of 2003, which was intended to allow the Secretary of Education to grant relief to students “in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency,” allowed him to create the cancellation program. But Roberts and the majority ruled that “the Secretary’s invocation of the waiver power here does not remotely resemble how it has been used on prior occasions.”

The administration also argued that “there are fewer reasons to be concerned” about the preservation of the separation of powers between the three branches of government “in cases involving benefits.”

Roberts scoffed at that latter argument, noting that “it would be odd to think that separation of powers concerns” — referenced by Pelosi at her 2021 press conference — “evaporate simply because the Government is providing monetary benefits rather than imposing obligations.”

Despite her preemptive admission of the program’s constitutional issues, Pelosi later praised it as a “historic targeted student debt relief” and “a strong step in Democrats’ fight to expand access to higher education.”

Watch Pelosi’s press conference above.

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