In his majority opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts referenced former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA.) to clarify why President Biden’s student loan relief program was deemed unconstitutional.
Roberts quoted the “then-Speaker of the House” Pelosi, reiterating that the California Democrat has said ‘People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.'”
The quote Roberts used came from remarks Pelosi made on July 28, 2021, during a press conference.
At the time, she suggested a Biden could only “postpone” and “delay” student loan repayments, but he didn’t have the “power” to forgive student loans as that required “Congress.”
In his opinion, Roberts wrote that besides that, “the dissent offers little to rebut our conclusion,” highlighting that the quote answers many of the “previous major questions,” citing Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurring opinion.
Roberts’ opinion comes as the Supreme Court has ruled on numerous high-profile cases.
One of those decisions is a recent case involving a Christian web designer who refused to design websites for gay couples. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in an opinion on Friday (June 30).
Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of the web designer, stating that they were not obligated to provide their services to same-sex couples.
About Sotomayor’s dissent, Gorsuch wrote, “It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case.”
Instead, he claimed Sotomayor was reimagining the facts of the case from “top to bottom” and failed to answer a fundamental question regarding whether a State could “force someone” providing an “expressive” service to “abandon her conscience” rather than express the “preferred message.”
