Supreme Court’s rulings on student loan debt, LGBTQ rights affect millions | ABCNL

a new ABC News ipsis poll found that a majority of Americans approve of the latest Supreme Court ruling restricting affirmative action in college admissions but the country is more divided on other high-profile rulings and 53 percent of Americans now say justices rule mainly on the basis of their partisan political views up about 10 points since last January to break this all down for us let's bring in ABC News legal contributor Kimberly Whaley and ABC news's Jay O'Brien Kim I'll start with you that is a big number 53 percent as we said up about 10 percentage points just since January how damaging is that public perception for this Supreme Court well the United States Supreme Court basically gave itself the authority to construe the Constitution back in the 19th century and it doesn't have any enforcement mechanism so I think it runs the risk of sort of delegitimizing itself to the point where Americans just see it as another cynical political operation and given Dobbs where the for the first time in American history it established individual constitutional right was obliterated and then you add the affirmative action rulings and the 303 creative case which essentially said you have a free speech right to discriminate uh on the basis of lgbtq status as well as race gender you know national origin religion there aren't any limits in that I think it's fair for Americans to say listen I thought we got to vote on this stuff why is it that the Supreme Court is doing this by Fiat and Kim you know as a legal scholar yourself what are your thoughts are the justices of this court more driven by politics than their predecessors you know where this really lost me was with the Texas sb8 abortion law where that's where there was a turning point for me if you recall prior to Dobbs Texas passed a six-week abortion ban and at that time Roe versus Wade was still the law of the land and the and it was a 24-week uh abortion limit and the court let that unconstitutional law go into effect even under basic civil procedure basic litigation standards it let that go and the fact that it didn't apply sort of you know law school 101 to at least hold that law in a bands until it got to Dobbs that's when I said listen the law this court in some cases is not following the law it's following something else now that's not to say in all cases it's just unfortunately in the most controversial cases the ones that involved our culture wars the stuff that people are really polarized and divided around they're reaching for straws and aggrandizing their own power and I think at the end of the day it does damage not just to individuals who feel they have no right they have no say in these big issues anymore but also to the institution itself which is so vital for the rule of law in America of course so Jay the president we know sharply criticizing a lot of these rulings saying this is not a quote normal court and that it's done more to unravel basic rights than any Court in recent history is the White House prepared to take any action here now to reform the court what might that look like well the president has been under pressure by some progressives in his party to expand the quarter take other actions as you said to change the makeup of the Supreme Court but the president the White House have been very reticent to do anything of that nature the president even getting a question last week asked if he would move to expand the court he said that that would harm the court going forward and even quote politicize it maybe forever so again the president not willing to go that far but what we are seeing from Democrats is something that we've previously seen largely from Republicans which is using the Supreme Court as an election year issue something that Republicans did for decades now seeing Democrats bringing up Dobbs bringing up other recent decisions as they try to energize voters ahead of November 2024. and Jay the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden has some power some power over student loan debt you know but not on that massive scale his initial plan had outlined you and I have been talking about this over the past few days how could he try to go around this ruling to Grant borrowers some relief well as you know the Court's decision was that the president couldn't use What's called the heroes act which is a law that was first pass a version of it first pass in 2001 and it had to do with student loan borrowers who were impacted by terrorism and then it gets expanded in 2003 it's used in 2020 by the Trump Administration to essentially suspend student loan payments during the pandemic because it was a National Emergency the Supreme Court says President Biden doesn't have the power to cancel student debt under that law so what we heard from the president last week is that he wants to use a different federal law Now The Higher Education Act to try to do something similar and cancel student debt using that vehicle the White House says that it believes it has the legal power to use The Higher Education Act although this might be a slower process which is why they began this process by trying to use the heroes act but it's worth pointing out here Alexis that could face legal challenges the White House says it's confident it can legally do this but it was also confident it could use the heroes act to do this and the Supreme Court told them that they couldn't so this could be a long process even if they do get the legal ability to carry this through it might not be until after the 2024 election if then exactly I think the long and short of it is borrowers should not be holding their breath Jay and Kim thanks so much hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 20,523

Keywords: Court, LGBTQ, Supreme, abc, abcnl, justices, loan, loans, news, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-100624397, student, students

Id: 30jkRFWF6eQ

Length: 5min 49sec (349 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023