Kagan, J., dissenting
cial Congress knew to hold the responsibility for administering the Government’s student-loan portfolio and programs. See §1082. Student loans are in the Secretary’s wheelhouse. And so too, Congress decided, relief from those loan obligations in case of emergency. That delegation was the entire point of the HEROES Act. Indeed, the statute accomplishes nothing else.
The majority is therefore wrong to say that the “indicators from our previous major questions cases are present here.” Ante, at 23 (internal quotation marks omitted). Compare the HEROES Act to other statutes containing broad delegations that the same majority has found to raise major-questions problems. Last Term, for example, the majority thought the trouble with the Clean Power Plan lay in the EPA’s use of a “long-extant” and “ancillary” provision addressed to other matters. West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20). Before that, the majority invalidated the CDC’s eviction moratorium because the agency had asserted authority far outside its “particular domain.” Alabama Assn. of Realtors, 594 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). I thought both those decisions wrong. But assume the opposite; there is, even on that view, nothing like those circumstances here. (Or, to quote the majority quoting me, those “case[s are] distinguishable from this one.” Ante, at 23.) In this case, the Secretary responsible for carrying out the student-loan programs forgave student loans in a national emergency under the core provision of a recently enacted statute empowering him to provide student-loan relief in national emergencies.[1] Today’s decision thus moves the
- ↑ The nature of the delegation here poses a particular challenge for Justice Barrett, given her distinctive understanding of the major-questions doctrine. In her thoughtful concurrence, she notes the “importance of context when a court interprets a delegation to an administrative agency.” Ante, at 2 (emphasis in original). I agree, and have said so; there are, indeed, some significant overlaps between my and Justice
