Supreme Court justices might not like President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness — and they might not even think he has the authority to carry it out.

But none of that matters if the court finds that a major legal condition doesn’t exist: standing, in which a plaintiff must prove concrete injury caused by the policy they’re challenging.

When the Supreme Court took on the two cases that paused Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers on Tuesday, all justices scrutinized whether the plaintiffs in both cases had the grounds to sue Biden’s plan in the first place. The first case the court heard was brought by six Republican-led states who argued the debt relief would hurt their states’ tax revenues, and the revenue of student-loan company MOHELA. The second case was brought on behalf of two student-loan borrowers who did not qualify for the full $20,000 amount of relief.

Both cases brought up issues with Biden’s authority to use the HEROES Act of 2003 to cancel student debt, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency, like COVID-19. They argued the president was demonstrating executive overreach using that law and said it’s not what Congress intended.

While the justices questioned all of those topics, they spent the bulk of the time drilling into the issue of standing. Article 3 standing is something all plaintiffs must prove — that they would be injured by the policy, that the injury can be directly traced back to the defendant, and that the relief they’re seeking would address those injuries.