Ode to the Laws of Student Loan Debt

May poets scathe judges who rewrite legal doctrine to serve the wealthy

When standing up to tyranny
A judge might set aside the law
Of standing, so that cheerfully
He vomits up a wordful slaw.
His allies will not care one bit
If the judge’s view is full of shit
It’s convenient. For now.
Arguments opposing those in power
Serve well today, expire in an hour.

Every college graduate must understand
Judges paid to bind them, planned
One debt is sacred, another forgiven
A rich man’s debt wiped clean, then driven
Home to poorer people to then pay.
Others shrug: irrelevant per se.

© 2022, Tom Tordillo. All rights reserved.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash A great deal of debt has been dumped on college students, more than $2 trillion. Many young people decide they shouldn’t vote in elections because why bother — it’s not like that debt will change. And since they tend not to show up, older folks find ingenious tricks to dump their debts on young people, who seldom even realize when and how that happened.

So a federal judge apparently derailed the Biden ‘student loan debt forgiveness’ program yesterday. Shocking.

Many people who call themselves “conservative” shrug when debts of extremely wealthy people are forgiven (they’ll even think the people who did that were ‘smart’) — but insist upon enforcing them for young students, poor people, and others.

Many people who call themselves “conservative” will oppose anyone interfering with a property right, even if that property right shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Take the trade in endangered species. The most important legal legacy of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the doctrine of “legal standing,” was first elaborated in the landmark case, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) to block activist groups from opposing government action that authorized someone to wipe out endangered species.

As far as Scalia was concerned, those people weren’t personally ‘injured’ by the government policy. They might love some bird or fish or whatever, but wiping it out didn’t affect them.

Essentially, Scalia’s argument means fish, birds, and other animals must argue their injuries themselves. Perhaps there’s a few species that can muster suitable legal reasoning.

Judge Pitman claims to be applying Scalia’s doctrine — while creating an exception that destroys it.

Defendants seem to argue that no one has standing to challenge the Program because where the government is providing a benefit, nobody is harmed by the existence of that benefit. ECF №32 at 57–58

…

But this is untrue….[plaintiffs’] injury …is that they personally did not receive forgiveness and were denied a procedural right to comment on the Program’s eligibility requirements.

Brown v. U.S. Department of Education (Nov. 10, 2022), opinion by Mark Pitman, US District Judge

Apparently, the plaintiffs were not able to say anything about the eligibility requirements for the student loan forgiveness program over the last year or three when it was being proposed, formed, vetted, and explored.

I never chopped down a tree. If the government lets anyone do so anywhere, without giving me a chance to comment on the decision, can I block others from chopping down trees?

Scalia’s doctrine was crafted to ensure that the answer to my hypothetical was an obvious “no.” Pitman’s approach ends the Scalia approach. Conservatives might care about that — but “conservatives” will not: they just care about ‘winning’ and have no idea what they wish to ‘conserve.’

And poets? Once upon a time, poetry connected to a broader world than the space between our ears — seeking liberation, connection, confrontation, transformation.

I do not know if poets care about things like this. But I’m quite sure somewhere, someone can craft better words than I.