The cancelations: If the law doesn’t fit [updated]

President Biden’s “cancelation” of student loans in the aggregate amount of hundreds of billions of dollars is bad public policy in several dimensions. It lacks any respectable justification. It is also of dubious legality — although they have a theory.

The theory is a farcical stretch. They couldn’t care less about the weakness of their pretense to legality. If the law doesn’t fit…what they really count on is the difficulty of finding plaintiffs with legal standing to challenge the scheme in court.

Now come Frank Garrison and the Pacific Legal Foundation. Garrison has a claim of illegality that relies on a colorable standing claim based on the taxation of the giveaway as it applies to him under state law. If Garrison can make his standing claim fly and the court has to address the merits of the lawsuit, Garrison should win. Biden lacks the authority to do what he did.

Robby Soave links to Garrison’s complaint in his Reason column on the lawsuit. Andrew McCarthy takes up the standing argument briefly in his New York Post column on the illegality of the giveaway.

UPDATE: The Indiana federal district court has denied Garrison motion for preliminary relief filed in the case. The court order casts doubt on the theory of standing on which Garrison’s claim rests.

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