The Biden administration suffered the latest setback in its student debt relief efforts on Thursday after a federal judge in Missouri temporarily blocked the government from launching a plan that would provide student debt relief for millions of borrowers.
The ruling further hampers the administration’s efforts to advance its work on student loans before the November election and comes amid ongoing Republican challenges to President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiatives.
The government, which unveiled the plans in April, said these efforts would provide student debt relief to more than 30 million borrowers. The proposals were never finalized.
In a September lawsuit, Missouri cited Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota and Ohio the administration about the plan.
Their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Georgia, came just days after a separate student debt relief efforts — the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan — remained on hold after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift a block on the plan in slow August.
After the lawsuit was filed in September, U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall of Georgia put a pause on the plan interim injunction on September 5th and extended this order on September 19 while the case could be reviewed.
But on Wednesday, Hall Let this order expireGeorgia dismissed the lawsuit and sent the case to federal court in Missouri.
After the lawsuit moved to Missouri and the injunction was not extended, the remaining six states in the case quickly filed for one interim injunction.
U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp the states’ request was met On Thursday, he wrote that the administration is prohibited from “cancelling student loans en masse, forgiving principal or interest, failing to charge borrowers for accrued interest, or implementing any other actions under the (debt relief plans) or directing federal contractors to take such actions.” “. ”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey praised Schelps’ decision Thursday Post on X that it is a “huge win for transparency, the rule of law, and for every American not having to foot the bill for other people’s Ivy League debt.”
Meanwhile, an Education Department spokesperson said in a statement that the agency was “extremely disappointed with this decision on our proposed debt relief rules, which have not even been finalized yet.”
“This lawsuit was filed by elected Republicans who made it clear that they will stop at nothing to prevent millions of their own constituents from getting relief on their student loans,” the spokesman said.
The department will “continue to vigorously defend these proposals in court” and “will not stop fighting to fix the broken student loan system and provide support and relief to borrowers across the country,” they added.
The Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group, also criticized Missouri’s decision.
“With this case, the Missouri attorney general continues to put naked political interests and corporate greed above student loan borrowers in Missouri and across the country,” Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing attorney for the advocacy group, said in a statement Statement from Thursday.
“This is a shameful attack on tens of millions of student loan borrowers and our justice system as a whole,” Yu said. “We will not stop fighting to expose these abuses and ensure borrowers get the relief they deserve.”
