How to Navigate SCOTUS' Rulings on Student Loans, Affirmative Action

Read Part One of this story about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on LGBTQ+ discrimination.

In the last days of June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, opened the door to LGBTQ+ discrimination and outlawed the Biden administration’s plan to forgive student loans. These are monumental rulings that directly affect people of color, queer folks, prospective students and the 43 million Americans who would have had some relief from their student debt — leaving many devastated and fearful for the future.

In our series on the ramifications of these Supreme Court decisions, we’re unpacking how they’ll affect you — and what can be done about it. In this explainer, we hear from experts about the Supreme Court’s two decisions that affect students: namely, the court’s rulings against affirmative action, and student loan forgiveness.

What do you need to know if you’re a current or prospective student? How will these decisions impact social mobility and diversity — not only in higher education but in the workforce and society more broadly? And how can you empower yourself in the face of these rulings that have proven devastating news for many?

Speaking in front of an assembled crowd at Manny’s, a San Francisco community space, was the panel:

• Courtney Liss, associate at San Francisco law firm Keker, Van Nest and Peters
• Cody Harris, partner at Keker, Van Nest and Peters
• Matthew Coles, professor of practice at UC Law SF (formerly UC Hastings)

June 29: The Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

In the case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court declared that race cannot be a factor in admissions. Colleges and admissions can no longer consider an applicant’s race as one of many factors in deciding who to admit.

The court’s conservative majority effectively overturned cases reaching back 45 years in invalidating admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.

In the decision for the court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the nation’s colleges and universities must use colorblind criteria in admissions. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first-ever Black female justice on the Supreme Court, wrote in her dissent that “with let-them-eat-cake obliviousness,” the court’s majority “pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.” Read more on the affirmative action ruling from NPR.

What prospective students need to know about these changes

“You can technically still, in your main essay, write about diversity,” said San Francisco lawyer Courtney Liss, “as long as you are discussing how it individually strengthens your application.”

Giving the example of her own background, Liss said that she herself could write in her application essay about how “growing up with a mom who’s a refugee, who didn’t know how to navigate social systems, made me want to go to law school.” But then, Liss added, college admissions officers now have to consider, “Did my race impact me personally in being braver?”

“They can’t say, ‘Yeah, it’s automatically hard to have parents who don’t speak English.’ Even though it is often very hard,” Liss said.

Who’s behind this case?

The affirmative action cases were brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions — the group that filed the lawsuits against both schools in 2014. The group’s argument was that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions and called for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.

Students for Fair Admissions’ suit claimed that the schools particularly discriminated against Asian American students. Liss noted that as an Asian American who was the first in her family to go to college, she found this case “really tragic” in how she saw the Asian American community being “pitted against or used against, like as a wedge, in the broader community of color in which we are — and should be considered — part.”

She also noted the plurality of experiences among Asian Americans, saying, “So many of which are so far removed from this lawsuit” — and how the perception that “Asians are harmed by affirmative action practices” is based on this notion of the community as a monolith.

How this ruling could impact students and society now

In June, NPR reported on places where affirmative action has already been eliminated and found that there was a severe drop in admissions of people of color — particularly among Black students.

These places include the University of California, which in 1996, was prohibited from considering race as a factor in admissions after the state’s voters passed a ballot measure against affirmative action.

After the Supreme Court’s decision on June 29, UC President Michael Drake wrote that without being able to consider race in the admissions process, institutions would now have to “work much harder to identify and address the root causes of societal inequities that hinder diverse students in pursuing and achieving a higher education.”

Striking down affirmative action, Liss said, will not only hold back individuals, but society more broadly.

“When you have fewer students of color in college, you have fewer students of color in med school and fewer students of color who become doctors … already, we live in a country with some of the highest maternal mortality rates, especially for Black mothers,” Liss said.

“We live in a country where there are so few CEOs of color, and this only strengthens that — and it only strengthens the pipeline for white students, against the interests of students of color,” she said.

June 30: The Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program

By ruling against the Biden administration in the case Biden v. Nebraska, the Supreme Court effectively killed the White House’s $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debts for millions of Americans.

The 6-3 decision, with conservative justices in the majority, said the Biden administration overstepped its authority with the plan, and it left borrowers on the hook for repayments that are expected to resume in the fall.

Biden’s loan forgiveness plan would have canceled up to $20,000 in federal student loans for 43 million people. Of those, 20 million would have had their remaining student debt erased completely.

How the student loans case will impact prospective students

Addressing the practical impact of this decision on student loans, Liss said: “A lot of students like me, and like a lot of other people, won’t go [to college] … or they won’t be able to afford to go.” It was a decision, she said, that would undoubtedly “disproportionately affect people of color and people from other underrepresented backgrounds.”

For those students who would still take on massive student loans to be able to go to college, Liss expressed deep concern about how the decision could change “the shape of their lives” on account of the sheer amount of debt they’d undertake.

When thinking about the professions that many graduates now wouldn’t feel able to embark upon — “students who might be future doctors or lawyers or legislators” — because they couldn’t afford to, Liss said it was “really f—— sad.”

“My education has been not just like a door for me, but a door for my whole family,” Liss said. “And it’s like, just slamming that door shut in people’s faces.”

What’s the future of student loan forgiveness after this ruling?

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Biden vowed to push ahead with a new plan to provide student loan relief for millions of borrowers, while blaming Republican “hypocrisy” for triggering the decision that wiped out his original plan.

If you have student loans, payment requirements for student loans will resume in October. But Biden said that in the coming weeks, he’ll work under the authority of the Higher Education Act to begin a new program designed to ease borrowers’ threat of default if they fall behind over the next year. Read more about the White House’s plans for student debt forgiveness after the Supreme Court ruling.

Biden’s SAVE Plan, framed as  “a student loan safety net,” would also allow millions of Americans with student loans to enroll in a new repayment plan that offers some of the most lenient terms ever.

Interest won’t pile up as long as borrowers make regular payments. Millions of people will have monthly payments reduced to $0. And in as little as 10 years, any remaining debt will be canceled. The Education Department says the SAVE Plan will be available to all borrowers in the Direct Loan Program who are in good standing on their loans, and that borrowers will be notified when the new application process launches this summer.  Read more about the SAVE Plan.

In addition, more than 800,000 federal student loan borrowers will still have their student loan debts automatically erased, independent of the Supreme Court’s recent decision — as part of a one-time “account adjustment” for those borrowers specifically impacted by the White House’s controversial income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.

This targeted student loan forgiveness is the result of the Biden administration’s 2022 pledge to help these borrowers after multiple complaints, lawsuits and an NPR investigation into IDR plans into mismanagement by the department and loan servicers. Read more about student loan forgiveness for these borrowers around IDR plans.

Answering more questions about the Supreme Court

Why it’s important to engage with Supreme Court rulings — even when the content is painful

Harris issued a general urge for audiences to read and educate themselves about Supreme Court cases by finding and downloading them online.

• Tell us: What else do you need information about right now?

“They’re daunting at first,” he acknowledged. “But you get used to them as you read them” — adding that people shouldn’t worry if they want to “skip the boring parts and kind of get to the guts.” Eventually, Harris said, their Supreme Court-reading “muscle” will develop and they’ll “get the feel for what these things are like.”

Why should you read Supreme Court cases for yourself?

“If we just leave these issues to people like us — lawyers, professors — that’s you sort of giving away your birthright,” Harris warned. “This is part of the country. This is part of our charter of government. These people — these nine people, these lawyers in robes — are making a lot of decisions that affect all of us very personally — and our country and how it operates.”

“It’s incumbent upon all of us as Americans,” Harris  urged, “to engage with it — as difficult as it is.”

Could the Supreme Court be changed?

With these recent rulings on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has led many to question what’s even possible in terms of reforming the Court.

Could there, hypothetically, be another court above the Supreme Court?

“The answer is no,” Harris confirmed. “The Constitution only provides for one court, which is the Supreme Court. It doesn’t say how many justices have to be in it, but it’s just one.”

But Harris was nonetheless keen to provide context and perspective for how the Supreme Court’s rulings have, historically, “changed over time” depending on the composition of its justices.

“This hasn’t been a steady march towards equality,” he said. “It’s like a sine wave. It’s gone up and down — and up and down.”

A key focus of reform advocates has been the term limits of Supreme Court justices. On June 30, California Representative Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) reintroduced the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act, specifically prompted by the Supreme Court’s decision that blocked the Biden administration’s plan to forgive student loan debt. Khanna’s bill aims to enact 18-year term limits for the justices and to “stop extreme partisanship” in a court he described as “regressive.”

Read more about how Khanna’s bill would work, and its potential chances of success.

Does the Supreme Court care about public opinion?

From Dobbs in 2022 to affirmative action last month, the Court’s recent rulings have drawn sharp criticism and spurred many public protests. Does this dissent have an impact on the justices?

Perhaps, Harris said — who noted that throughout its history, the Supreme Court has been “very mindful of its legitimacy — and its jealously guards it because it’s all it has.”

Unlike the executive branch of the United States government, which includes the military, the Supreme Court “doesn’t have an army to enforce its rules and its rulings,” Harris stressed. So amid the absence of that ability to enforce its rules, “what they have is legitimacy — that when they speak, everyone up to and including the President of the United States and the military [says] ‘OK, the court has spoken.’”

If that accord was to ever go away, Harris said, “That’s how you get what’s called a constitutional crisis.”

“I think they’re beginning to get sensitive to the notion that there’s wide, ever-growing public belief that some of what they’re doing is not legitimate,” said Matthew Coles of the conservative justices.

“It’s really important if you think what they’re doing is not legitimate, to keep voicing that.”

This story contains reporting from The Associated Press.

Tell us: What else do you need information about?

At KQED News, we know that it can sometimes be hard to track down the answers to navigate life in the Bay Area in 2023. We’ve published clear, practical explainers and guides about COVID, how to cope with intense winter weather and how to exercise your right to protest safely.

So tell us: What do you need to know more about? Tell us, and you could see your question answered online or on social media. What you submit will make our reporting stronger, and help us decide what to cover here on our site, and on KQED Public Radio, too.