President Joe Biden announces a new student loan forgiveness program on April 8, 2024, in Madison, Wis.

WASHINGTON − When President Joe Biden tried to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt, the Supreme Court said he had stretched a federal law too far.

The conservative court likewise said Biden could not extend an eviction moratorium tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Environmental Protection Agency could not regulate power plant emissions that contribute to climate change.

In those cases, the majority said, the agencies were trying to go beyond what Congress had approved.

The high court has said in recent years that the executive branch can’t take actions that have a major impact on the economy or are a matter of great “political significance,” without clear authorization from Congress.

Now the court, using similar reasoning, could shoot down the centerpiece of Trump's economic agenda.

Are Trump's tariffs different?

The nine justices will decide whether its "major questions doctrine" applies to Trump's worldwide tariffs.

A divided appeals court said it does.

But some legal experts note that doctrine is in tension with the typical deference the court affords presidents when it comes to foreign affairs.

“How those two principles work themselves out will be very interesting to watch,” said Curtis A. Bradley, an expert on foreign relations law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Both sides of the debate were on display in the 7-4 ruling against the tariffs by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

The appeals court said it seemed unlikely that Congress intended to give presidents unlimited authority to impose tariffs.

And the economic impact of the tariffs is at least five times greater than the $400 billion in student loan debt relief that Biden wanted to enact, the court said.

In that case, Biden argued he had authority to grant relief during the COVID-19 pandemic because of a law giving the secretary of Education the power to protect borrowers affected by national emergencies.

But Chief Justice John Roberts said the Education secretary had created a "novel and fundamentally different loan forgiveness program" and cannot rewrite the law "from the ground up."

"The ‘economic and political significance’ of the Secretary’s action is staggering by any measure," Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority.

In the 2022 EPA case, Justice Neil Gorsuch said major policies benefit from the input of different perspectives that the legislative process requires, making them more “stable over time.”

“By effectively requiring a broad consensus to pass legislation, the Constitution sought to ensure that any new laws would enjoy wide social acceptance," he wrote in a concurring opinion that was joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Roman Martinez, a veteran Supreme Court lawyer, said he'll be watching for whether the conservative court uses similar reasoning when evaluating the legality of Trump's tariffs and other policies.

"It will be interesting to see how those same principles are applied in this context where you have a Republican president with a major policy initiative," he said.

In the tariff dispute that the Supreme Court agreed to hear in November, Trump is relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, a law historically used to impose economic sanctions and other penalties on foreign countries.

While the law doesn’t mention tariffs, the administration has pointed to the president’s power under the law to “regulate” imports in a crisis. Trump says the nation’s persistent trade deficit and the flow of fentanyl into the United States qualify as such an emergency.

Appeals court split over Trump's tariffs

A majority on the appeals court said that every time Congress has given the president the power to impose tariffs, lawmakers set up “well-defined procedural and substantive limitations” that aren’t present in IEEPA.

“As interpreted by the Government, IEEPA, unlike these other statutes, would impose no such limitations on the President’s authority,” they wrote. “The tariffs at issue in this case implicate the concerns animating the major questions doctrine as they are both `unheralded’ and `transformative.’”

The four appeals court judges who dissented called IEEPA an “eyes-open congressional choice” to give presidents wide latitude.

“We conclude that IEEPA’s authorization of presidential action in this realm is not an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority under the Supreme Court’s decisions, which have upheld broad grants of authority, including tariffing authority, in this foreign-affairs-related area,” Judge Richard Taranto, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote for the minority.

Another potential problem with US tariffs

John Yoo, a former Justice Department official under George W. Bush, thinks the law gives presidents broad authority to impose tariffs in an emergency. But he said Trump could – and should – lose for another reason: the president can’t make a credible case for an emergency.

“A trade deficit that has persisted for five decades is not unusual enough to constitute a national emergency,” Yoo recently wrote.

If it were, he said, then the changing climate could also be considered an emergency, and another president could use IEEPA to go after countries it thinks aren’t doing enough to stop fossil fuel emissions.

“Supporters of Trump’s tariffs,” Yoo wrote, “would have little grounds on which to oppose a climate change emergency.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Will the Supreme Court treat Trump's tariffs like Biden's policies?

Reporting by Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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