Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cited former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in his majority opinion to help explain why President Biden’s student loan waivers were unconstitutional.
On Friday, Roberts released the Supreme Court opinion that blocked Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, one of the president’s top campaign promises.
In the opinion, Roberts quoted then-Speaker Pelosi as saying the president did not have the power to cancel federal student loan debt.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW THIS SUPREME COURT NULLISHED BIDEN’S STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts quoted former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in his majority opinion as he explained why President Biden’s student loan waiver was unconstitutional. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“As then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained, ‘People think that the president of the United States has the power to forgive the debt. He doesn’t,” Roberts was quoted as saying at Pelosi’s press conference on July 28, 2021. “‘He can postpone. It can delay But he doesn’t have that power. This has to be an act of Congress.'”
“Other than reiterating its interpretation of the statute, the dissent offers little to rebut our conclusion that “there are here indicators of our prior leading question cases,”” Roberts wrote, citing Justice Amy’s concurring opinion Coney Barrett.
Robert’s opinion comes as the Supreme Court rules on several high-profile cases over the summer months.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a harsh rebuke of Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the case of a Christian web designer that the court ruled was not required to design websites for gay couples.
“It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude that we are examining the same case,” Gorsuch wrote in Friday’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision. That decision said web designer Lorie Smith was not legally required to design websites for gay marriage because doing so would violate her rights to free speech and Christian belief, despite a Colorado law that prohibits discrimination by sexual orientation.
GORSUCH EXPLODES SOTOMAYOR’S DISSENT ON CHRISTIAN WEB DESIGNER’S DECADE: “REIMAGINES” THE FACTS FROM “UP TO DOWN”
Gorsuch said Sotomayor’s dissent in the case “reimagines the facts” from the “top down” and does not answer the fundamental question: “Can a state compel someone who provides his own expressive services to abandon his conscience and say your favorite message?”
“In some places, the dissent turns so much on the facts that it opens fire on its own position,” Gorsuch wrote. “For example: while stressing that a Colorado company cannot refuse” the full and equal enjoyment of [its] services based on a client’s protection status. . . the dissent assures us that a company selling creative services “to the public” has the right “to decide what messages to include or not include.” . .’ But if that’s true, what are we debating about?”
Gorsuch wrote that instead of addressing the key aspects of the case, the dissent “spends much of its time adrift in a sea of hypotheticals about photographers, stationers and others, asking whether they too provide expressive services covered by the First Amendment.”
“As then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explained, ‘People think that the president of the United States has the power to forgive the debt. He doesn’t,” Roberts was quoted as saying at Pelosi’s press conference on July 28, 2021. “‘He can postpone. It can delay But he doesn’t have that power. ‘This has to be an act of Congress.'” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Friday’s decision overturned a lower court ruling that went up against Smith, who said the law violated her First Amendment rights by forcing her to promote messages that violate her deeply held faith.
The high court majority stated that “under Colorado’s logic, the government can compel anyone speaking for pay on a given subject to accept all commissions on that same subject, regardless of the message, if the subject involves somehow the legally protected trait of a customer.”
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Sotomayor dissented from the majority, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They called the ruling “a new license to discriminate” and said “the symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
“The unattractive lesson of the majority opinion is this: what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodation laws is quite different. It is that in a free and democratic society , there can be no social type. castes,” Sotomayor said.
The case, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, drew national attention as it presented competing interests of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and non-discrimination of LGBTQ people.
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed reporting.
Houston Keene is a political writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene
