The Supreme Court gave me two big presents last week. In addition to holding that state affirmative action was unconstitutional, the Court took a step back from the unjustified version of the Major Questions Doctrine in the Biden v. Nebraska, the student loan cancellation case.
In Nebraska, Chief Justice Roberts for the majority did not simply write an opinion relying on the MQD as he had in the past. Instead, he held that the result was justified under ordinary statutory interpretation principles and only relied on the MQD as an alternative ground. This greatly reduced the impact of the MQD.
Perhaps more importantly, originalist justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurrence stating that the MQD should be understood as seeking the meaning of the statutory text in context based on ordinary statutory interpretive principles rather than as a substantive rule of interpretation.
Together, these actions suggest that the Supreme Court majority may be coming to recognize that the MQD should be reinterpreted to conform to originalist principles.
Posted at 8:00 AM