A federal court of appeals has blocked President Joe Biden and his administration from implementing student debt relief designed to lower payments for borrowers. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the seven Republican states who brought the case to stop parts of the U.S. Department of Education’s debt relief plan that were not previously blocked by a lower court, Reuters reported.
That ruling last month by U.S. District Judge John Ross in St. Louis had blocked the department from granting further loan forgiveness under the administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan but had not blocked all of the plan. The plan provides more generous terms than past income-based repayment plans, lowering monthly payments for eligible borrowers and allowing those whose original principal balances were $12,000 or less to have their debt forgiven after 10 years.
State attorneys general led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey subsequently last week asked the 8th Circuit to block the rest of the SAVE Plan. The court did so through a one-page order granting an administrative stay. JUST IN: The Court granted our emergency motion to BLOCK Joe Biden’s entire illegal student loan plan, which would have saddled working Americans with half-a-trillion dollars in Ivy League debt. HUGE win for every American who still believes in paying their own way,” the Missouri attorney general said on X, formerly Twitter.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said they are assessing the decision and “will continue to aggressively defend the SAVE Plan.” In April, a coalition of conservative-led states joined forces to stop the president’s new student loan forgiveness scheme. The group of 11 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit against his news plan in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas on March 28 in which they called the program unlawful and said that the Biden administration did not have the authority to implement it, The Epoch Times reported.
A coalition of States sues Defendant Biden, as well as co-defendants the Department of Education and Secretary of Education Miguel Cordona, to stop a second attempt to avoid Congress and pass an illegal student debt forgiveness,” the lawsuit said. Just ten days after the Supreme Court’s rebuke, Defendants released a Rule purporting to abolish at least $156 billion in student debt, with at new ‘SAVE Plan’ as its centerpiece,” it said.
The Epoch Times added: In the summer of 2023, the Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt for some 43 million Americans, protecting taxpayers from having to foot the bill and delivering a blow to one of the president’s campaign promises.
Undeterred by the Supreme Court ruling, President Biden quickly rolled out a new student loan forgiveness scheme to take its place, this one an income-driven repayment plan that forgives a portion of student debt based on the borrower’s income and family size. The regulations implementing the SAVE Plan are scheduled to fully go into effect on July 1, 2024, but the Biden administration said in January that it would accelerate some of the benefits, soon after forgiving $1.2 billion in student loans for nearly 153,000 borrowers enrolled in the plan.
President Biden’s new student loan forgiveness plan is slightly smaller than the old one, at least for now. But it’s just as illegal,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey praised the lawsuit and said that his state would head another coalition against the student loan forgiveness program.
I’m extremely pleased to see Kansas is leading a multi-state coalition in challenging President Biden’s latest attempt to unlawfully transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars in Ivy League debt onto working Missouri families. I’m pleased to share that my office is also leading a multi-state coalition and will be filing suit in Missouri in the coming days. Between our two coalitions of states, we will get this matter in front of a judge even more quickly to deliver a win for the American people. The Supreme Court sided with Missouri on this matter the first time. I look forward to bringing home yet another win for the Constitution and the rule of law,” he said.
