It's a big day for student loan borrowers at the Supreme Court ⚖️
As SCOTUS hears oral arguments on the Biden-Harris administration's student loan forgiveness plan, students are at the high court, shedding light on who this decision could most directly impact.
As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the Biden-Harris administration’s student loan forgiveness plan — which has been held up in legal limbo after states and individuals sued over its legality — students are at the high court, shedding light on who this decision could most directly impact.
Starting last night, students with college affordability advocacy organization Rise and student debt cancellation organization We the 45M lined up outside the Supreme Court.
To learn more about the demonstration, I checked in with some of the leaders behind it.
“We flew in about 100 college students from across the country: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California. We hosted an action at the court last night. We had members of Congress like [Representatives] Maxwell Frost, Jimmy Gomez, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, [and] Senator Markey come through,” Rise CEO Max Lubin said in a voice note this morning.
“We organized this in partnership with Melissa Byrne, and then we camped out overnight at the court so that our students could be the first students in line and we got about 60 students in the court this morning for the first hearing,” Lubin said.
“The people impacted by a court case should be able to look justices in the eye during a hearing. We have a right to bear witness, to hold space, in every room deciding our lives,” student debt cancellation activist and founder of We the 45M, Melissa Byrne, said in a text.
Both Lubin and Byrne stressed the impact that the Supreme Court’s decision could have on the current generation of student debt borrowers.
“It’s super important for our students to be here. For many of them, this is their first time out of state, and it’s an opportunity for them to make their voices heard and share their stories, making sure that student loan borrowers are at the forefront of this fight and that they are not forgotten,” Lubin said. “40 million is not just a statistic — it’s peoples lives, it’s their livelihoods, it’s their futures that’s on the line here and that’s why this is so important and that’s why we are leading these actions.”
This morning, a wide range of groups gathered outside the Supreme Court including Young Invincibles, NAACP, We the 45M, Rise, Student Borrower Protection Center, the Alliance for Youth Action and more.
“Student loan debt is a crisis defining several generations,” Carmel Pryor, Senior Director of Communications for the Alliance for Youth Action, said in a text. “Year after year, predatory lending companies have ransacked the pockets of students, all while the government has failed to act in any meaningful way against these companies. The buck stops here. Young people are struggling, and if we’re supposed to lead the country into a new era, we can’t have ball-and-chain debt dragging us down.”
Even Pizza to the Polls was there, delivering pizza to demonstrators.
On the horizon 👀
Later today Demand Justice, a progressive group focused on court reform and ideological balance, will host an event pushing for court expansion with student debt activists.