How Courts Blocked Biden on Immigration, Student Debt and Title IX

Legal challenges have blocked many of the policies that President Biden saw as critical to his legacy, on issues like immigration and student loans.

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The Supreme Court and other federal courts have thwarted many of President Biden’s plans.

After rewriting Title IX regulations to include protections for gender identity, President Biden told trans students: “We see you.” When he announced in April his latest executive actions to waive student loan debt, he proudly proclaimed that “this relief can be life-changing.”

And standing in front of a group of immigrant advocates in June, Mr. Biden boasted that he had used the power of his presidency to provide a new path to legal status for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens — ending fear and uncertainty for a half-million people.

“We can fix that,” Mr. Biden said. “And that’s what I’m going to do today: fix it.”

In all three cases — and a long list of other executive actions — Mr. Biden’s promises of progress and relief have been stymied by aggressive legal challenges led by conservative activists, lawmakers and Republican state attorneys general. Their efforts to disrupt the president’s agenda have often been bolstered by federal judges, appellate courts and, in some cases, the majority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

The president’s use of executive orders was supposed to have been the solution to a closely divided and paralyzed Congress, especially as the 2024 race got underway. Of his six signature bills that Mr. Biden signed into law during his presidency, none came after December of 2022.

But as Mr. Biden nears the end of his presidency, the effort to bypass Congress with regulatory changes, executive orders and presidential memorandums has faltered. That outcome is likely to affect his legacy and could make it more difficult for Vice President Kamala Harris to point to progress as she campaigns for the White House this fall.

In many cases, the courts have temporarily blocked Mr. Biden’s programs pending legal challenges that could take years to resolve. In some instances — like the president’s original plan to provide nearly $400 billion in student debt relief — the Supreme Court has declared the programs unconstitutional, forcing the Biden administration back to the drawing board.

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