Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts added his name to the concurring decision to bring down President Joe Biden’s student loan repayment program. But among the things that were ignored in their decision was a small word that the justices unilaterally decided wasn’t in the law because it could make their decision invalid.
This is how the dissenting justices described it in their opinion.
“From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint,” Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
“The author of today’s opinion once wrote that a 1970s-era standing decision ‘became emblematic’ of ‘how utterly manipulable’ this Court’s standing law is ‘if not taken seriously as a matter of judicial self-restraint,'” Kagan continued, referring to Roberts in her dissent. “After today, no one will have to go back 50 years for the classic case of the Court manipulating standing doctrine, rather than obeying the edict to stay in its lane.”
She went on to say that whether the executive branch overstepped its bounds “does not license this Court to exceed its own role.”
“Courts must still ‘function as courts,’ this one no less than others,” she continued. “And in our system, that means refusing to decide cases that are not really cases because the plaintiffs have not suffered concrete injuries.”
Roberts was triggered by the justices calling out his legal negligence.
“It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary,” Roberts whined. He claimed the majority made its decision by adhering to court precedent “old and new” that “requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.”
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan asked former conservative Jennifer Rubin, “What do you make of the sheer arrogance, hubris, temerity of Chief Justice John Roberts suggesting that the three liberal justices have been mean to the conservatives in their dissent and misleading the public on the proper role of the court?”
Rubin highlighted the problem in the ruling by the conservatives.
“It is worth pointing out, in interpreting a statute using a completely made-up new gimmick called the ‘major questions doctrine,’ that when he read the statute, he ignored the word ‘waive,’ began Rubin. “That is what the president did. They ‘waived’ the student debt. ‘Waive’ was in the statute. ‘Waive’ was not a word that Chief Justice Roberts liked, so ‘waive’ didn’t come up in his opinion. That is how dishonest it is. And sure, he is thin-skinned. He is ornery, and he is very fussy when the three justices and the minority point out the emperor has no clothes. The emperor is becoming an emperor in reality.”
See her epic smackdown in the video below or at the link here.
Image via Shutterstock