Judge Clarence Thomas once wrote about the “crushing weight” of student loans

Judge Clarence Thomas was in his 40s and in his third year on the nation’s highest court when he paid off the last of his Yale Law School debts.

Thomas, the longest-serving judge and the court’s most staunch conservative, was skeptical of other Biden administration initiatives. And when the Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday related to President Joe Biden’s debt relief plan, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in outstanding student loans, Thomas likely won’t vote in favor of the government.

But judges’ own experiences can be relevant to how they approach a case, and Thomas alone has written about the role student loans played in his financial struggles.

A fellow law school student even suggested that Thomas file for bankruptcy after graduation “to get out of the crushing weight of all my student loans,” the judge wrote in his 2007 bestseller My Grandfather’s Son. He dismissed the idea.

It’s not clear that any of the other judges borrowed money to attend college or law school, or for their children’s education. Some judges grew up in relative wealth. Others reported they had grants to fund their way into some of the country’s most expensive private institutions.

Of the seven judges on the court who are parents, four have signaled through their investments that they don’t want their own children saddled with burdensome college debt and have hoarded money in tax-exempt college savings accounts that could limit needs for loans.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch have the most available, at least $600,000 and at least $300,000, respectively, according to the annual disclosure reports the judges filed in 2022. Everyone has two children.

Judges Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has two, also have money invested in college savings accounts where any income or gains are tax-free if spent on education.

None of the judges would comment on the story, a court spokeswoman said.

Thomas wrote vividly about his past money troubles in his resurrection story, recounting how a bank once foreclosed on one of his loans because repayment and payment requests were being sent to his grandparents’ home in Savannah, Georgia instead of Thomas’s home at the time in Jefferson City, Missouri .

Thomas was only able to take out another loan to repay the bank because his mentor, John Danforth, then Attorney General of Missouri and later US Senator, vouched for him.

Thomas noted that he had enrolled in a Yale tuition deferral program in which a group of students paid their outstanding loans together according to their financial ability, with those who earned the most paying the most.

At the time, Thomas’s first wife, Kathy, was pregnant. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I signed the dotted line and spent the next two decades paying back the money I borrowed from Yale during my last two years,” wrote Thomas.

When he was first appointed a federal judge in 1989, Thomas reported $10,000 in outstanding student loans, according to a news report at the time. The Biden administration picked the same number as the amount of debt relief most borrowers would receive under their plan.

Personal experiences can inform judges’ questions in the courtroom and influence their private discussions about a case, even if they play no part in the outcome.

“It helps to have people with different life experiences just because it enriches the conversation,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. Like Thomas, Sotomayor grew up poor. She said she got a full scholarship to Princeton as an undergraduate and, like Thomas, went to Yale to study law.

Preventing people from avoiding the kind of tough decisions Thomas faced is an important part of the government’s case for forgiving loans. The administration says without additional help, many borrowers will default on their payments once a lockdown that has been in place since the coronavirus pandemic began three years ago is lifted, no later than this summer.

Under a plan announced in August but so far blocked by federal courts, $10,000 in federal loans would be canceled for people earning less than $125,000 or for households earning less than $250,000. Pell Grant recipients, who tend to have less financial resources, would receive an additional $10,000 in debt relief.

The White House says 26 million people have already applied and 16 million have received relief. The program is estimated to cost $400 billion over the next three decades.

The litigation could revolve around any of several elements, including whether the Republican-led states and individuals suing over the plan have legal authority to go to court and whether Biden has federal authority to pursue such a broad one implement a loan forgiveness program.

Nebraska and other states challenging the program argue that far from being left behind, 20 million borrowers would get a “windfall” because their entire student debt would be paid off, Nebraska Attorney General Michael Hilgers wrote in the main paper of the Supreme Court of the States.

Which of these arguments will appeal to the court should become clear on Tuesday.

When she was dean of Harvard Law School, Judge Elena Kagan expressed concern about the high cost of law school, particularly for students considering lower-paying jobs.

Kagan set up a program that would allow students to attend their senior year free of charge if they agreed to a five-year commitment to work in the public sector. While this program is defunct, Harvard is offering scholarships to undergraduates to work in the public service.

When the program was created, Kagan said she wanted students to be able to work where they could “make the biggest difference, but that’s not the case now.” Instead, she said, “They often go to work where they don’t want to work because of the debt burden.”