Opinion of the Court
to invoke any other lawful source (if one exists) as grounds for granting them loan relief. Their interest is in obtaining loan forgiveness in general.
The Plan, however, is independent of any student-loan relief the Department might craft under the HEA (or any other statute). A decision by this Court that the Plan is lawful would have no effect on the Department’s ability to forgive respondents’ loans under the HEA.[1] Thus, the Plan poses no legal obstacle to the Department’s choosing to find other ways to remedy the harm respondents experience from not having their loans forgiven.
Put differently, the Department’s decision to give other people relief under a different statutory scheme did not cause respondents not to obtain the benefits they want. The cause of their supposed injury is far more pedestrian than that: The Department has simply chosen not to give them the relief they want. Ordinarily, a party’s recourse to induce an agency to take a desired action is to file not a lawsuit, but a “petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule.” 5 U. S. C. §553(e). The denial of such a petition “must be justified by a statement of reasons,” which in turn “can be appealed to the courts” if the litigant has standing to maintain such a suit. Auer v. Robbins, 519 U. S. 452, 459 (1997). Contesting a separate benefits program based on a theory that it crowds out the desired one, however, is an approach for which we have been unable to find any precedent.
It is true that in procedural-standing cases, we tolerate uncertainty over whether observing certain procedures would have led to (caused) a different substantive outcome, as with Lujan’s example of the dam and the bypassed environmental impact statement. See 504 U. S., at 572, n. 7. In
- ↑ We do not opine on the substantive lawfulness of any action the Department might take under the HEA or add anything to our construction of the HEROES Act as set forth in today’s opinion in Nebraska.
