Ruling ensures ‘a President cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt,’ Missouri AG says
The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that former President Joe Biden’s $500 billion student loan bailout is illegal, preventing any aspect of the initiative from being implemented.
In his decision, Judge L. Steven Grasz stated that Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, “has gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.”
“Rather than implying by omission or other ambiguities, Congress has spoken clearly when creating a repayment plan with loan forgiveness or otherwise authorizing it — explicitly stating the Secretary should cancel, discharge, repay, or assume the remaining unpaid balance,” Grasz wrote.
“As the Supreme Court previously held, Missouri suffers a cognizable financial harm when the Secretary enacts a plan that discharges student loans … The [Saving on a Valuable Education] Rule does so — it leads to loan forgiveness and closure of accounts serviced by [Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority] in as few as ten years of repayments,” the judge wrote.
The Biden administration’s SAVE Plan is an income-based student loan repayment plan that provides full loan forgiveness in certain cases, The College Fix previously reported.
In 2023, a research initiative called the Penn Wharton Budget Model projected that the “repayment plan” would cost taxpayers $475 billion over the next ten years, the New York Post reported.
Attorneys general from 17 Republican-led states filed the lawsuit against Biden and Cardona last year, arguing they do not have the authority to wipe out student loan debt for an estimated 30 million Americans.
After securing a partial preliminary injunction at the district court level, the attorneys general appealed the decision. In response, the Circuit Court of Appeals partially halted the loan forgiveness plan last year, the New York Post reported.
The court issued a final ruling this week, striking down the plan once and for all.
“We obtained another court order BLOCKING an illegal Biden-era student loan scheme,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote on X. “Though @JoeBiden is out of office, this precedent is imperative to ensuring a President cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt.”
“HUGE win,” he wrote.
Bailey also stated that “the ruling has no active impact beyond blocking future presidents from attempting Biden’s maneuver,” Fox News reported.
MORE: ‘Follow the law’: 23 AGs oppose Biden’s latest student loan bailout
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