A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to placed on hold a Texas judge’s ruling that said President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel lots of of billions of dollars in student loan debt was illegal.
Getty Images | Saul Loeb
A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to placed on hold a Texas judge’s ruling that said President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel lots of of billions of dollars in student loan debt was illegal.
The Recent Orleans-based fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Biden administration’s request to pause a judge’s Nov. 10 order vacating the $400 billion student debt relief program in a lawsuit pursued by a conservative advocacy group.
The choice by Fort Value, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman was considered one of two nationally that has prevented the U.S. Department of Education under Biden from moving forward with granting debt relief to thousands and thousands of borrowers.
The administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to similarly lift an order by the St. Louis-based eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that, on the request of six Republican-led states, had barred it from cancelling student loans.
Biden announced in August that the U.S. government would 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. Students who received Pell Grants to learn lower-income college students could have as much as $20,000 of their debt canceled.
In the course of the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to assist debt-saddled former college students. Biden’s program has drawn opposition from Republicans, who’ve portrayed it as shifting the burden of debt from wealthy elites to lower-income Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness program run would cost taxpayers about $400 billion.
About 26 million Americans have applied for student loan forgiveness, and the U.S. Department of Education had already approved requests from 16 million by the point Pittman, an appointee of former Republican Donald Trump, issued his ruling.
