Chief Justice John Roberts drew attention to the fact that the Biden administration wants to use a power to "modify" federal student loan programs in order to cancel roughly $400 billion in debt.
"In an opinion we had a few years ago by Justice (Antonin) Scalia, he talked about what the word 'modify' means, and he said 'modified' in our view connotes moderate change," Roberts said.
"It might be good English to say that the French Revolution modified the status of the French nobility, but only because there's a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm," Roberts said.
"We're talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modified?" Roberts asked.
The Biden administration argues it has the power to cancel federal student loan debt under a 2003 law called the HEREOS Act. But the law does not explicitly say the secretary of education has the power to cancel or forgive student loan debt.
Instead, the law says the secretary of education has the power to “waive or modify” a federal student loan program in order to ensure that individuals “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that in the context of the statute, "modify has to mean making a change up to the point of wholesale elimination."
"It would be really strange for Congress to say you can eliminate obligations altogether or tweak them just the littlest bit. But you can't do anything in between," she said.