On Friday (November 18), the Biden administration approached the Supreme Court to lift a legal obstacle that obstructs the administration’s student debt forgiveness program.
Friday’s lawsuit comes as part of the administration’s efforts to have the student debt relief program — that would provide eligible borrowers with $10,000 in debt forgiveness.
However, since President Joe Biden announced the program, lawsuits have emerged disputing the legality of the program. Of those lawsuits to concluded in rulings favoring the plaintiffs, bringing the debt forgiveness program to a halt.
On Friday, the DOJ, acting on behalf of the Biden administration, approached the Supreme Court to lift a Monday (November 14) ruling by the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing the ruling — and subsequent legal status of the debt forgiveness program — left “vulnerable borrowers” in “limbo.”
In Friday’s filing, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar explained to the Supreme Court justices that Monday’s 8th Circuit ruling “frustrates the government’s ability to respond” to the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating consequences “with the policies it has determined are necessary.”
Friday’s filing comes after a three-judge panel for the 8th Circuit unanimously agreed to halt Biden’s student forgiveness plan, estimated to cost $400 billion over the next 30 years.
The move by the 8th Circuit judges, blocking the student loan forgiveness program nationwide, was a win for six Republican-led states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and South Carolina — that argued they had been impacted by a nearly two-year-long freeze stopping the collection of student loan repayments and interest.
