Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s costly student loan relief plan
Kaelan Deese
Video Embed
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Joe Biden’s costly student loan forgiveness plan after a pair of challenges contested the legality of the initiative.
The high court handed down two opinions surrounding lawsuits against Biden’s plan to wipe away $400 billion in student debt. Chief Justice John Roberts penned the 6-3 majority opinion in the case Biden v. Nebraska.
The decision comes as a nearly three-year moratorium on student loan payments will soon end, as interest will start accruing again on Sept. 1 and payments are due beginning in October.
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME PAYMENTS: BIG CITIES THAT HAVE JUMPED INTO PROGRAMS TO GIVE AWAY MONEY
The high court for months has been toiling over the constitutionality of Biden’s plan after six Republican-led states sued and alleged the president exceeded his legal authority when he implemented the program last August to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for people holding federal student loans.
Biden used executive power under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, commonly known as the HEROES Act, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the basis, though the health emergency ended on May 11. The case, argued in February, asked whether the HEROES Act gives the secretary of education the power to grant federal student loan forgiveness.
Nebraska along with five other states that sued argued the 20 million borrowers who would have their entire loans erased would get a “windfall” leaving them better off than before the pandemic. The state challenge was successful in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which put the plan on hold last October.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 Republican-appointed majority seemed skeptical that the Biden administration had the authority to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in debt for more than 40 million borrowers. Conversely, they also appeared leery about whether the individual borrowers or the state plaintiffs had the standing to bring the lawsuits.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
In November, a separate lawsuit before Texas U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman succeeded in stalling the program, ruling that the HEROES Act did not provide Education Department broad authority to waive or forgive student loans as the president claimed it did.
Student loan payments were paused at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and that pause has been extended several times throughout the Trump and Biden administrations.
This is a developing story and will be updated.