Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Prospects Put on Hold Yet Again

President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt met another roadblock last week, when a Missouri federal judge blocked the widespread debt relief that the administration was hoping for.

The injunction was issued on Thursday in Missouri, only a few hours after the president seemingly got good news in Georgia regarding the student debt forgiveness program.

A court in Georgia dismissed their state from this legal challenge. It ruled that officials in Georgia weren’t able to demonstrate any injury suffered as a result of the Biden student debt forgiveness plan.

In doing so, the case was moved over to Missouri, which is a state that the court ruled still had standing in the case.

  1. Randal Hall, the U.S. district judge in the case, said that even though it’s been moved from Georgia and the temporary injunction against the plan has now expired, the White House still was able to move forward with its student debt relief plan.

Not surprisingly, though, the other states that are still challenging Biden’s plan quickly requested that the new Missouri judge block the plan. Those states — Ohio, North Dakota, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama and Missouri — are all led by Republican state governments.

Matthew Schelp, the new U.S. district judge overseeing the case in Missouri, granted the request made by those states on Thursday night.

In response to the ruling, Andrew Bailey, the Republican attorney general of Missouri, said:

“This is a huge win for transparency, the rule of law, and for every American who won’t have to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt.”

The Biden administration has been trying to pass student debt forgiveness for quite some time now but has just been unable to make any real headway. It has consistently run into legal issues in various courts over their plan.

This latest plan, if it were to go into effect, would provide full or partial student debt forgiveness to more than 27 million student loan borrowers.

Earlier this year, the GOP-led states challenged Biden’s plan. They claim that the Biden administration doesn’t have authority to provide the relief they are trying to give.

In a statement, a Biden administration spokesperson said:

“The Department of Education is extremely disappointed by this ruling on our proposed debt relief rules, which have not yet even been finalized. This lawsuit was brought by Republican elected officials who made clear they will stop at nothing to prevent millions of their own constituents from getting breathing room on their student loans.

“We will continue to vigorously defend these proposals in court.”

These battles in court have been going on for nearly a year now, with each side seemingly winning minor victories every now and again.

One of the big problems facing the Biden administration, of course, is that no matter who wins the presidential election next month, there is going to be a change-over in the White House.

It would seem much more likely that Kamala Harris would continue to move forward with these plans should she win, but it would almost be a certainty that Republican Donald Trump would stop them in his tracks if he won.

That leaves only a little more than three months for the Biden administration to get something passed and finalized by the courts before the president leaves office next January.