Conservative critics of President Joe Biden‘s plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt won a victory on Thursday when a federal judge in Texas declared that the program was illegal and had to be annulled.
The U.S. As he decided in favour of two borrowers who were supported by a conservative advocacy group, District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump in Fort Worth, labelled the program an “unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power.”
The 8th U.S. District Court, which is based in St. Louis, had already temporarily stopped the debt relief plan. While it considers a request to enjoin it made by six Republican-led states while they reviewed the dismissal of their own lawsuit, the Circuit Court of Appeals.
The judge’s decision resulted from a case filed by two debtors who were either completely or partially qualified for the loan forgiveness promised by Biden’s scheme. The plaintiffs claimed it was illegal and that proper rulemaking procedures were not followed.
The Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative lobbying organization started by Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, supported the borrowers.
The American Justice Department moved quickly to challenge the decision. The government vehemently disagreed with the choice, according to a statement from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The U.S. Department of Education has now granted petitions from 16 million of the approximately 26 million Americans who have sought for student loan forgiveness. When we win in court, Jean-Pierre explained, the government will save their information “so it can promptly handle their relief.”
No matter how many obstacles our opponents and special interests try to put in our way, “we will never stop fighting for hard-working Americans most in need,” she vowed.
Conservative state attorneys general and legal organizations have filed multiple cases against Biden’s plan, but plaintiffs had a difficult time persuading the courts that they were actually affected by it in a way that gave them legal standing until Thursday.
According to the August-announced plan, borrowers who earn less than $125,000 annually, or $250,000 for married couples, will have up to $10,000 of their student loan debt forgiven. Up to $20,000 of the debt owed by borrowers who earned Pell Grants—grants given to low-income college students—will be forgiven.
In September, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that over 40 million people would be eligible for debt forgiveness, which would erase nearly $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt.
Pittman stated in his 26-page decision that it made no difference whether Biden’s plan was wise because it was “one of the biggest exercises of legislative power without congressional approval in American history.”
The Biden administration relied on the HEROES Act, a law that offers debt help to military people, to enact the relief plan, but Pittman claimed that it did not authorize the $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.
In this nation, Pittman said, “we are not governed by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.” Instead, the Constitution that governs us establishes three separate and independent departments of government.
The decision, according to Elaine Parker, president of the Job Creators Network Foundation, “protects the rule of law, which requires that all Americans have their voices heard by their federal government,” she said in a statement.
