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Key Takeaways
- A federal court in Missouri has restored a block against the Biden administration forgiving the student loans of millions of borrowers.
- The ruling, issued by a Trump-appointed judge, was the latest twist in a legal battle over student loan forgiveness that could end up in the Supreme Court.
- Student loan forgiveness is an issue in the presidential election, with Kamala Harris in favor of it, and Donald Trump opposed.
Another federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.
Less than a day after a federal court in Georgia allowed the Department of Education to proceed with a program forgiving student debt, a different federal court in Missouri blocked it before it could go into effect.
The ruling Thursday by Eastern District Court of Missouri judge Matthew Schelp, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, once again freezes a rule change that would wipe out some or all of the federal student loans of millions of borrowers.
It was a legal victory for Missouri and a group of seven other Republican-led states that sued to stop the program’s rollout, which had been planned for as soon as this month.
What Does This Ruling Mean For Student Loan Borrowers?
The ruling is the latest twist in the Biden Administration’s efforts to cancel student loan debt for large swathes of the nation’s 43 million federal student loan borrowers.
Should the rule changes survive the legal challenges, it it would bring the total number of borrowers who had their loans at least partly forgiven to 30 million, when combined with the 4 million who have already received forgiveness under various rule changes by the White House.
The fate of the latest effort at forgiveness could end up being decided by the same conservative-majority Supreme Court that struck down a previous Biden forgiveness plan in June 2023. The high court may also end up ruling on the legality of the SAVE repayment plan that Biden’s administration created, and which is currently on hold while legal challenges by Republican states go through the courts.
The ongoing legal battle over student loan forgiveness, which breaks down on partisan lines, highlighted the stakes of the presidential election for student loan borrowers. Republicans have opposed forgiveness efforts, arguing that they’re not fair to people who paid their loans or didn’t go to college, and that Biden’s programs are unconstitutional.
Democratic proponents of forgiveness say it’s necessary to help borrowers deal with what is often a crushing financial burden. Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris has supported efforts at student debt cancelation, while her opponent, former president Trump, has criticized it.