Page:Biden v. Nebraska.pdf/50

Rh to keep judges’ policy views and preferences out of judicial decisionmaking is to hew to a statute’s text. The HEROES Act’s text settles the legality of the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. The statute provides the Secretary with broad authority to give emergency relief to student-loan borrowers, including by altering usual discharge rules. What the Secretary did fits comfortably within that delegation. But the Court forbids him to proceed. As in other recent cases, the rules of the game change when Congress enacts broad delegations allowing agencies to take substantial regulatory measures. See, e.g., West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U. S. ___ (2022). Then, as in this case, the Court reads statutes unnaturally, seeking to cabin their evident scope. And the Court applies heightened-specificity requirements, thwarting Congress’s efforts to ensure adequate responses to unforeseen events. The result here is that the Court substitutes itself for Congress and the Executive Branch in making national policy about student-loan forgiveness. Congress authorized the forgiveness plan (among many other actions); the Secretary put it in place; and the President would have been accountable for its success or failure. But this Court today decides that some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides, because (so says the Court) that assistance is too “significan[t].” With all respect, I dissent.

“No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies.” Simon v. ''Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization'', 426 U. S. 26, 37 (1976). In our system, “[f]ederal courts do not possess a roving commission to publicly opine on every legal question.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 8). Nor do they “exercise general legal oversight of the Legislative and