U.S. Supreme Court Makes Ruling on President Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

Washington, D.C. (KPEL News) - On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court made headlines as they banned colleges from considering race in admission policies, which affects schools like Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, and other universities who use "affirmative action" to boost the enrollment of Black and Latino students.

But, not all schools claim to use "affirmative action" in their enrollment practices.

On Friday, the High Court made a ruling on something that affects colleges on universities on a larger scale - President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. It's a plan that one of Louisiana's U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy spoke heavily against, both to me on "Acadiana's Morning News" and to Fox News.

President Biden's answer was to enact his $400 billion student debt scheme, which doesn't forgive debt. It really transfers the responsibility to pay it back away from the person who willingly took on the debt.

 

Cassidy is the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Republicans in the U.S. House, meanwhile, recently tried to kill the program through a procedural vote but did not reach enough votes to override Biden's veto, which he did in June according to Fox News.

On Friday, in a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Biden's program, according to Fox News. Cassidy welcomes the ruling.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling confirmed what we have known all along: the Biden administration’s student loan plan is an overreach of executive power. This is an obvious but welcomed ruling. President Biden’s student loan scheme...unfairly transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans onto those who chose not to attend college or already fulfilled their commitment to pay off their loans.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling, the President's Department of Education has been working to put measures into place that would still allow for at least $10,000 of most student loan borrowers' debt to still be forgiven. The $400 billion plan first unveiled in August 2022 wants to provide up to $20,000 of relief, affecting over 30 million American according to forbes.com.

In a letter sent by Cassidy's committee to the Department of Education, member chide ED "for their lack of preparedness to handle millions of student loan borrowers returning to repayment."

Sixty days after June 30, 2023, the return to repayment for student loans will begin for 43 million borrowers. The Department has been on notice for nearly two and a half years that it would need to develop a plan for a smooth transition to repayment. You have failed to provide us any evidence of any communication between the Department and loan servicers as of the date of this letter.” 

   

In addition, the committees are concerned about recent reports in the press that students are being encouraged not to make payments on their student loans once the return to repayment has begun. We expect you and senior officers of the Department to exercise leadership in countering such efforts wherever and whenever they occur, particularly since nonpayment will lead to negative financial consequences for borrowers and barriers to future financial opportunities.

Friday's SCOTUS ruling was actually on two cases: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown, according to Politico. The first case has to do with Republican state attorneys general challenging the loan forgivenes policy as violating the separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act. The latter case was brought about by two student loan borrowers who were denied relief and want the program gone.