U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks concerning the student loan forgiveness program from an auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, October 17, 2022.
Leah Millis | Reuters
A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in college student loans, someday after a judge dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit by six states difficult the debt-forgiveness program.
The eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the states’ emergency petition to freeze the loan forgiveness plan until the court rules on their request for a longer-term injunction while Thursday’s decision against the states is being appealed.
The St. Louis-based appeals court also ordered an expedited briefing schedule on the matter.
U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey in St. Louis ruled on Thursday that while the six Republican-led states had raised “vital and significant challenges to the debt relief plan,” he threw out their lawsuit on grounds they lacked the crucial legal standing to pursue the case.
Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina said Biden’s plan skirted congressional authority and threatened the states’ future tax revenues and money earned by state entities that put money into or service the student loans.
Their case is one among a number that conservative state attorneys general and legal groups have filed in search of to halt the debt forgiveness plan announced in August by Biden, a Democrat.
Autrey ruled about an hour after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied without explanation an emergency request to place the debt relief plan on hold in a separate challenge brought by the Wisconsin-based Brown County Taxpayers Association.
In a policy benefiting tens of millions of Americans, Biden said the U.S. government will forgive as much as $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making lower than $125,000 a 12 months, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to learn lower-income college students can have as much as $20,000 of their debt canceled.
The policy fulfilled a promise that Biden made throughout the 2020 presidential campaign to assist debt-saddled former college students. The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness would cost the federal government about $400 billion.
Democrats are hoping the policy will boost support for them within the Nov. 8 midterm elections by which control of Congress is at stake.
