 Today, the Supreme Court announced two more decisions that demonstrate just how ideological and illegitimate they've become. And in a moment, you're going to see that I'm not just saying that because I'm angry since both of these decisions affect me personally, but legally speaking, these cases make a mockery of the judiciary, and you're going to see why. So in a 6-3 decision of Biden v. Nebraska, they struck down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. So if you were one of the millions of individuals counting on $10,000 to $20,000 worth of student debt relief, they ruled that that's unconstitutional. Now at the end of this video, I do have an update about what Biden decided to do in response to that. But before we get to that, we also have to talk about the other decision. The 6-3 decision of 303 Creative v. Eleanus. And as Harvard Law's Alejandro Carbio put it, they made this legal now, literal discrimination against LGBTQ people by businesses. And she adds, there is literally no practical way for the court to distinguish the difference between saying, I won't design a site for gay couples and I don't design a site for interracial couples. This opens the door to legal racial discrimination. So today, this dangerous new precedent opens the door to a very scary and discriminatory world. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself because the first thing that you should know about this case is that it was based off of nothing. Literally. The business owner, who is the plaintiff, wasn't even asked to serve a gay couple. That's right. Because as Slate's Mark Joseph Stern explains, the case 303 Creative v. Eleanus was manufactured by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm that opposes LGBTQ plus equality at all walks of life. 303 Creative is a for-profit Colorado business owned and operated by Lori Smith who opposes same-sex marriage. No same-sex couple has ever tried to hire Lori Smith to create a website for their wedding. Represented by ADF, however, she filed a preemptive lawsuit demanding a First Amendment right to turn away any same-sex couple who request a wedding website. So the case is built entirely on hypotheticals and there is no real record to speak of. Justice Neil Gorsuch's 6-3 opinion for the court got around this problem by insisting that Smith faces a quote, credible threat of enforcement because Colorado acknowledges that it will enforce its civil rights law. He went on to declare that Colorado seeks to compel a speech Ms. Smith does not wish to provide, speech that would be quote, celebrating marriages, those of same-sex couples of which she does not approve. The state insists that it would not compel Smith to actually design a wedding website but merely to sell a pre-existing template to all customers. Gorsuch simply dismissed this claim while simultaneously criticizing the state for its ostensible eagerness to punish Smith and other anti-gay business owners. So let's pause right there and just let this sink in. This bigot wasn't even compelled to design a website, but yet the court was so eager to greenlight discrimination against gay couples that they agreed to pretend like the state wanted to compel her to design a gay wedding website when the state itself insisted that that was not the case. It is beyond comical that this is the decision that they reached and that they even took up this case to begin with because, again, they created a new precedence out of nothing, out of thin air. I mean, it's not the judiciary's duty to legislate, but that's effectively what they're doing here. This is judicial activism in its purest form. And what this does is it creates a First Amendment exemption so businesses cannot be compelled to creatively express messages in support of same-sex marriage if they don't agree with it. In Western rights, in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent, the opinion is quite literally a notice that reads, some services may be denied to same-sex couples. Exactly. This is textbook discrimination concocted from a state law that wouldn't have even required compelled speech. Now some of you might be saying, well, this isn't that bad since they can only deny some services to gay people, but this doesn't mean that they can straight up say that I'm not serving you because you're gay. But it's not really that simple, right? As HuffPost explains, civil rights groups are already raising the alarm and response to the broadness of the ruling. The court's decision opens the door to any business that claims to provide customized services to discriminate against historically marginalized groups. The decision is fundamentally misguided, the ACLU's legal director David Cole said in a statement. In other words, it's not that simple and this is only the beginning. Perhaps a clothing store owner could say that selling women's clothing to a trans woman is tantamount to them being compelled to support trans people or them designing clothing for trans women is tantamount to them supporting something that they don't agree with. Perhaps a food vendor can deny services for a gay wedding as well because the creation of food can be maybe interpreted as an expressive art form and by serving that gay couple they feel like they're lending support to homosexuality and in her dissent, Sotomayor brought up this very concern. She cited various examples of recent anti-gay discriminations during continues, including a funeral home that refused to cremate and hold a memorial service for a gay man is a memorial service expressive conduct now shielded by the Constitution. Perhaps so. And that's exactly the problem. Can a subway sandwich artist say, I don't want to serve this gay couple because me creating this sandwich is a work of art and I don't want to express support for homosexuality. You see, it's it's not so simple as to say, oh, well, it's limited discrimination. Once you open the door to discrimination, it's only going to lead to more discrimination. But let's assume for a moment that this is strictly limited to artists and it doesn't get twisted and manipulated or expanded by conservatives. That's still discrimination. Period. If you deny service to a gay couple that you would not deny to a straight couple, that is textbook discrimination. So what should be the solution for this particular web designer if her worst nightmare comes to fruition? Well, if a gay couple asks her to design a wedding website for them, she doesn't have to do that, right? She can deny that service to the gay couple. But that means she also has to deny the same service to straight couples. Same with bakers. I mean, you don't have to bake a gay couple a wedding cake, but then you also have to deny that same service to straight couples. I mean, imagine if a baker said that they only want to make a wedding cake for white couples and black couples but not interracial couples because they're against racial mixing. I mean, that would obviously be discriminatory, right? So when you change the marginalized group in question, why is it suddenly acceptable behavior? If baking cakes for some couples is going to be an issue for you, then you simply have to refuse service to all couples to avoid discrimination. Wedding cakes cannot be a category of services that you offer if this is going to be a problem. But the court is saying, actually, discrimination is OK. It's OK. Go ahead. And Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion, bent over backwards to split hairs and justify discrimination here. But in Sotomayor's dissent, she highlighted how idiotic his logic is. Stern continues, Gorsuch in response tried to draw a line between discrimination based on status and discrimination based on message claiming that the First Amendment only protects the latter. Smith, he concluded, was not discriminating against gay people because of their sexual orientation. She was refusing to express a message about sexual orientation that she does not believe. Free speech does not cover status-based discrimination unrelated to expression, he wrote, but it does, quote, protect a speaker's right to control her own message. That distinction favors Smith because she says she will serve gay clients, just not those who are getting married. Sotomayor replied, this logic would be amusing if it were not so embarrassing. Quipping that on Gorsuch's logic, a racist hotel could argue that black people may still rent rooms for their white friends. Right, and her dissent was incredible. Opening the door to discrimination obviously is a terrible idea, not just for queer people, because guess what, it goes both ways. LGBTQ plus business owners, now all of a sudden cannot be compelled to express creative support for heterosexuality or cisgender people and presumably religion as well. So, good jobs, Godus, good job. But moving on, so they also struck down Biden's student debt relief plan, saying that he overstepped his authority, and this entire case is, again, absurd because the plaintiff obviously did not have standing, but the court went out of their way to argue, actually, they definitely do have standing. So, as Mark Joseph Stern explains, Chief Justice John Roberts' decision in Biden v. Nebraska blazed past a clearly insurmountable standing problem to scold the president for even trying to use the law according to its own plain terms in order to offer mass debt relief in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also chastised Justice Elena Kagan for her, quote, disturbing suggestion in dissent that the majority had gone beyond the proper role of the judiciary. The decision boils down to the Chief Justice's obvious disdain for student debt relief, which is perhaps why he interpreted Kagan's criticism as, in his words, a personal affronts. The biggest question in the case was whether anyone could establish standing to challenge the program in the first place. After all, the federal government itself holds this debt and no one is obviously injured by the government helping somebody else by erasing their debt. In a separate case decided on Friday, the court unanimously held that two people who opposed the plan had no standing to sue. Missouri tried to get around this problem by fixating on Mohella, a corporation created by the state that services student loans. The Missouri Attorney General asserted that Mohella would suffer financially because of Biden's plan, which turns out to be false, and that the state itself could represent its interests in court. A key flaw in the reasoning is that Mohella is an independent entity from Missouri that could have sued to defend its own interest, but refused to do so and even refused to help Missouri represent it in court. State officials had to file public records requests to obtain key information because Mohella did not want to participate in this case at all, unbelievable. Roberts didn't care about any of that. Mohella is an instrumentality of Missouri he wrote and Biden's plan will cut Mohella's revenues, again, provably false, so according to Roberts and the court's five other hardline conservatives, the state had established standing. Oh, okay, they established standing, I see. Listen, if you get the feeling that they're just making stuff up as they go along, you'd be correct. They're not adhering contrary to popular belief. They're not adhering to a judicial philosophy. They're simply making a decision based on their own reactionary ideological views and then they make up the legal rationale to justify their ruling. That's how this works, it's how it's always worked. But I mean, remember when conservatives said that they were against activist judges? Well, it doesn't get any more activist than this, but it's okay so long as they're issuing decisions that Republicans agree with. So that's why I told you at the beginning of this video that this court has lost its legitimacy. It's not just sour grapes because both of these decisions affect me as a gay dude with student debt that qualified for cancellation like I qualified for the 20K. And now I don't get that. Now discrimination is permissible against me. So it's not just that I'm angry because I am. It's that they have no legitimacy, right? These decisions are legally hollow. But with that being said, this ruling is not surprising and in response, Biden, he called out the hypocrisy of Republicans who supported PPP loan cancellation in a press conference where he talked about this decision and he also made the following announcements. First, I'm announcing today a new path consistent with today's ruling to provide student debt relief to as many bars as possible, as quickly as possible. We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act. That will allow Secretary Cardona who's with me today to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances. This new path is legally sound. It's gonna take longer than in my view, it's the best path to be managed to providing for as many bars as possible with debt relief. I've directed my team to move as quickly as possible on this law. Just moments ago, Secretary Cardona took the first step to initiate that new approach. We're not gonna waste any time on this. We're getting moving on average, it's gonna take longer but we're getting at it right away. Second, we know what many borrowers will need to make their hard choices, which their budgets are being strained out when they start to repay their monthly loan payments this fall. You know, we know that figuring out how to pay these added expenses can take time for borrowers and they might miss payments at the front end as they get back into repayment. Normally, this could lead borrowers to fall into delinquency and default. But without their financial security, it would hurt their financial security and that's not good for them or the economy. That's why we're creating a temporary 12 month what we're calling on-ramp repayment program. And now, this is not the same as a student loan pause. It's been in effect for the past three years. Monthly payments will be due. Bills will not go out and interest will be accruing. And during this period, if you can pay your monthly bills, you should. But if you cannot, if you miss payments, this on-ramp will temporarily remove the threat of default or having your credit harm, which can hurt borrowers for years to come. Because the Department of Education won't refer borrowers. And the reason why that will work, they won't refer borrowers who miss payments to credit agencies for 12 months to give them a chance to get back up and running. So rather than using his authority under the HEROES Act, which is what he did originally, he is now pursuing debt cancellation through the Higher Education Act, which is good news. I just wish that he did this from the get-go, right? But regardless, we don't know how much he's planning to cancel, but this is the correct path. Now, he also announced a 12-month program, as you heard, whereby if you miss payments, you won't default. But here's the thing. They're gonna strike this down again. It doesn't matter if you pursue the correct legal path because there is no correct legal path for this rogue, far-right Supreme Court. They will strike it down even if you have the legal authority under the Higher Education Act to cancel student debt. So what do you do? Well, you just cancel it all. If you create another means-tested program, you give Republicans the opportunity to legally block it by challenging it in the court. But if you just say, I'm canceling it all, you don't have to apply, it's done, sign your name on the executive order, and then you move on, they can't do shit about that. We know this because this is how student debt cancellation has gone before. Once it's canceled, you can't uncancel it. So if he's serious, he would cancel it all. But I don't think that that's gonna be the case. But regardless, we'll have to wait and see. If he pursues $10,000 to $20,000 worth of cancellation under the Higher Education Act, that will be challenged as well. Will it be struck down? Probably so. Either way, we are basically fucked, and I just love how they announced the most unpopular opinions and then they duck out for the rest of the summer. They fuck off after they fucked us. It's just predictable, but this court doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about any of us, and this country is falling apart because these Republicans just refuse to help normal people. They only want to help large multinational corporations and billionaires. Because again, PVP loans, that's A-OK, student debt relief for mostly people who make less than $90,000, $70,000 a year. Unacceptable. That's how they feel about you.