OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden has continued to hunt for loopholes in the Supreme Court decision that stopped his student loan forgiveness program and he is continuing to get challenged.
A coalition of conservative-led states has joined forces to stop his 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.
The lawsuit said that the Biden administration has exceeded its authority by creating the program.
The lawsuit said, “The authority that Defendants claim now lacks any substantive limits and amounts to claiming that they can abolish all student debt at any time by rulemaking alone.”
“Indeed, as the Defendants scrape ever deeper into the barrel for legal pretexts to abolish student debts, the illegality of those artifices becomes more obvious,” it 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.
“Arkansas was part of the original coalition that sued the Biden administration over its first unlawful debt-cancellation plan. President Biden has already lost on this question once, and he is refusing to follow the law. The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: President Biden cannot unilaterally cancel student debt and force taxpayers to bear the multi-billion-dollar cost,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said.
“The Supreme Court sided with us on this matter the first time,” the Missouri Attorney General said on X, formerly Twitter. “I look forward to bringing home yet another win for the Constitution and the rule of law.”
“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,” he said.
