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BIDEN v. NEBRASKA

Opinion of the Court

Stat. §80–2804 (1887)—including the power to sue and be sued on its own behalf, see HRR Arkansas, Inc. v. River City Contractors, Inc., 350 Ark. 420, 427, 87 S. W. 3d 232, 237 (2002); see, e.g., Board of Trustees, Univ. of Ark. v. Pulaski County, 229 Ark. 370, 315 S. W. 2d 879 (1958). We permitted Arkansas to bring an original suit all the same. Where a State has been harmed in carrying out its responsibilities, the fact that it chose to exercise its authority through a public corporation it created and controls does not bar the State from suing to remedy that harm itself.^[1]

The Secretary’s plan harms MOHELA in the performance of its public function and so directly harms the State that created and controls MOHELA. Missouri thus has suffered an injury in fact sufficient to give it standing to challenge the Secretary’s plan. With Article III satisfied, we turn to the merits.

III

The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not. We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to “waive or modify” existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.

↑ The dissent, for all its attempts to cabin these precedents, cites no precedents of its own addressing a State’s standing to sue for a harm to its instrumentality. The dissent offers only a state court case involving a different public corporation, in which the Missouri Supreme Court said that the corporation was separate from the State for the purposes of a state ban on “the lending of the credit of the state.” Menorah Medical Center v. Health and Ed. Facilities Auth., 584 S. W. 2d 73, 78 (1979) (plurality opinion). But as the dissent recognizes, a public corporation can count as part of the State for some but not “other purposes.” Post, at 11, and n. 1. The Missouri Supreme Court said nothing about, and had no reason to address, whether an injury to that public corporation was a harm to the State.

[1] The dissent, for all its attempts to cabin these precedents, cites no precedents of its own addressing a State’s standing to sue for a harm to its instrumentality. The dissent offers only a state court case involving a different public corporation, in which the Missouri Supreme Court said that the corporation was separate from the State for the purposes of a state ban on “the lending of the credit of the state.” Menorah Medical Center v. Health and Ed. Facilities Auth., 584 S. W. 2d 73, 78 (1979) (plurality opinion). But as the dissent recognizes, a public corporation can count as part of the State for some but not “other purposes.” Post, at 11, and n. 1. The Missouri Supreme Court said nothing about, and had no reason to address, whether an injury to that public corporation was a harm to the State.

[1]