A lawsuit against the Biden administration that allows student loan relief without repaying undergrad loans. Defending the case in Missouri in the General Reclamation
The rising cost of college was cited by the Biden administration as one of the reasons why they launched their student loan relief program in August. For low- and middle-income people, the relief program includes up to $20,000 in debt cancellation for grant recipients and up to $10,000 for non-grant recipients. Reducing monthly payments on undergrad loans and fighting the rising cost of college education is included in a proposal for debt relief that includes loan forgiveness.
The Department of Education knows what people’s income is so it’s unlikely that they won’t receive student loan forgiveness.
Borrowers with privately held federal student loans who applied to consolidate their loans into Direct Loans before September 29th will get one-time debt relief. A small percentage of borrowers have FFEL loans, and the program is no longer active. This is a completely different program than Direct Loans,” the statement said.
The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Missouri by state attorneys general from Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina, as well as legal representatives from Iowa.
In addition to being economically foolish and unjust, the mass debt cancellation is one of many unlawful regulatory actions the Biden Administration has taken. No statute permits President Biden to unilaterally relieve millions of individuals from their obligation to pay loans they voluntarily assumed,” Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson’s office said in a news release.
According to the White House spokesman, there are Republican officials in six states fighting to stop relief for borrowers buried under mountains of debt.
The President and his administration are allowing working and middle class families breathing room as they recover from the Swine Flu, so they can start making their loan payments in January.
The Pacific Legal Foundation and the Secretary of Education have the Legal Authority to Grant Loans to Students Who Expend Borrower’s Unintentional Student Debt
A federal judge denied the request from the borrowers who claimed that they would incur a bigger state tax bill due to the loan forgiveness. The Pacific Legal Foundation’s public interest lawyer has until October 10 to file a new lawsuit.
If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness. Pell grants are awarded to millions of low-income students each year, based on factors that include their family’s size and income and the cost charged by their college. They are more likely to end up in default if they struggle to repay their student debt.
The Biden administration argues that the CBO’s cost estimate should be viewed over a 30-year time period and came out with its own analysis two days later. Over the next decade, it expects the program to cost an average of $30 billion per year.
Estimating the cost of student debt forgiveness is complicated because loans are generally paid back over several years. The CBO estimate should be looked at for a long time, argued the White House.
The Heroes Act, which was enacted in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, “provides the Secretary broad authority to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods,” including a war, other military operation or national emergency, according to the memo.
The lawsuit was filed by a conservative group, the Job Creators Network Foundation, in October on behalf of two borrowers who did not qualify for debt relief.
Shafroth stated that it was unclear who would want to bring a case, and she believed the Biden administration’s legal statutory authority was strong. Standing to bring a case is a procedural threshold requiring that an injury be inflicted on a plaintiff to justify a lawsuit.
A preliminary injunction may be needed to prevent the cancellation from occurring before a final ruling is made on the merits of the case, if the standing hurdle is cleared.
Several recent US Supreme Court decisions have looked at executive power and the federal government’s power to implement rules. While the Supreme Court takes up a small number of cases each year, lower courts may look at what the justices have said in those cases when assessing the Department of Education’s authority.
Creating a Better World: The Biden-Biden Loan Forgiveness Program for Student Borrowers and the Era of Student Loan Relief
Senior administration officials said Wednesday that the Biden administration is increasing efforts to fight scam artists trying to take advantage of borrowers applying for student loan forgiveness.
The application window for student debt relief will be open this month. You can learn how to avoid student debt relief scam and how to take precautions ahead of time. The picture is on this page.
Betsy Mayotte, the president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, says that the Biden forgiveness thing happened around Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.
Mayotte commented that the release is a step in the right direction. There are only two things we can do as a community to prevent fraud. One is to educate borrowers while the other is to enforce.
The effort to stop these types of fraud falls heavily on borrowers themselves, and much of the announcements focus on educating the public on how to report them.
We know there are some evil people who are going to use this program to scam people out of money, so it’s an all-government approach.
We’re attempting to get as much relief for the hard working former students as possible. We’re moving fast so we can get the application and process here.
A Fact Sheet on Borrower Assistance for Debt Relief: When the Application will Go Live and When the Process Will Go Live on a Trusted Site
The administration urged borrowers to sign up to be notified when the application is available, to make sure their loan servicers have their current contact information and to report any scams they encounter to the FTC.
One way to avoid scam vulnerability in the first place would be to release more specific information on what the forgiveness application will look like or when to expect it.
“One of the most critical ways to prevent scams and protect borrowers from being taken advantage of is developing a clear, simple, and secure site for borrowers to apply for debt relief and have the most up to date information from trusted sources,” the administration wrote in a fact sheet outlining their efforts to combat scams.
Senior administration officials did not provide any information on when the application will go live or what the process will look like in a Wednesday briefing.
“In one way, it’ll help,” she says. “But if I know the scammers, they’ll use that as an opportunity too: ‘The application’s out. You have to hurry. Time is short. Now that the applications are out, let us help you to make sure you don’t miss it.’ It is a catch-22.
Student Loan Forgiveness under Biden’s Policy: Tax Foundation Repercussions, Attorney General’s Office, and the Arizona Supreme Court
In addition to federal Direct Loans used to pay for an undergraduate degree, federal PLUS loans borrowed by graduate students and parents may also be eligible if the borrower meets the income requirements.
According to the Department of Education, the online application will be short. The applications of borrowers will be submitted without uploading any documents or using their Federal Student Aid ID.
You have to submit an application, and we’ll review it and determine eligibility for debt relief and work with the loan servicer to process it. If we need more information from you, we’ll get in touch with you.
The Tax Foundation states that if state legislative changes are not made, some states may tax Biden’s plan.
Republican states are leading the charge. A number of states, including Arizona, have filed lawsuits saying they could be harmed by the forgiveness plan.
Brnovich, a Republican, argues that the policy could reduce Arizona’s tax revenue because the state code doesn’t consider the loan forgiveness as taxable income, according to the lawsuit. The complaint also argues that the forgiveness policy will hurt the attorney general office’s ability to recruit employees. Currently its employees may be eligible for the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but some potential job candidates may not view that as a benefit if their student loan debt is already canceled, the lawsuit argues.
The email said that borrowers should never reveal their account passwords or personal information to anyone other than the Department of Education and loan servicers.
The Biden-Harris administration has their backs and we’re as committed as ever, to deliver essential student debt relief to tens of millions of Americans,” Cardona said.
“I went into school as an undergrad expecting to never pay off my student loan debt,” Moore said, “but the women’s right to choose directly affects me and my family and people I care about.”
Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt is popular with young people but it is only the start of a debate about the Supreme Court’s June decision which left abortion rights in the states.
“The climate in the country really scares me, to be honest,” said Shannon Thomas, 25, who’s Moore’s girlfriend. She has federal student loan debt as well and expects that Biden’s executive action could eliminate years of future payments for her.
She said she was worried about her job, patients, and the future of her job if women’s rights weren’t protected.
Dakota Hall, the executive director of the Alliance for Youth Action, said that other issues are important, but when a constitutionally protected right is lost, it impacts so many people in this country.
He didn’t mean that organizers don’t care what happens to the environment, student loan debt, or the economy in the long run, but they know what’s at stake right now.
Student debt is also on the line, with some advocating for the White House to cancel all federal student debt or at least eliminate it.
We’re going to give you $10,000 before the elections, so you’ll show up to vote. But I think it’s kind of like we still need more,” Kyra Mitchell, 23, told NPR.
Mitchell, who votes in Michigan, is a youth board member with the NAACP. She says the issue has remained a priority because of the large impact student debt has on Black borrowers.
Mitchell supports the preservation of abortion access and protecting voting rights, but he also believes that debt cancellation could affect much more than student loans.
The racial wealth gap is influencing more and more reproductive access, Mitchell said, and if we can close it, we can also influence other things.
Getting More Young to Vote: How Student Debt Relief and Abortion Access Could Revive a Similar Signal to Student Loan Relief
Santiago Mayer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, says both student debt relief and abortion access are issues that can have similar messaging. The Republicans want to take away your rights.
“It all ties together into this basic message of youth rights and how young people deserve to be able to enjoy their lives in the same sort of way that their parents and grandparents were able to,” he told NPR.
“Both with the rights of personal freedoms such as abortion, and also being able to have personal finances that allow them to succeed in life, which is now impossible because of the insane cost of college and the burden of student debt,” he added.
I’ve been tweeting a lot about how younger women are seeing large spikes in engagement post-Dobbs (including some astounding turnout data from KS). This chart shows the states with the biggest increase in the share of young women who register to vote. Let’s take a pic.
“Historically, you see voters being more energized in an oppositional sense,” Bonier told NPR, “it generally tends to organize voters, and to the extent that there’s a flip side of that coin, it’s generally voters being motivated to protect something.”
Bonier didn’t see a huge boost in voter registration or turnout that he could link to Biden’s order on student loan relief, but he said that it can be seen as an increased support for Democratic candidates.
“I think perhaps whereas Dobbs will have the effect of turning out more younger progressive voters to help defend choice. Perhaps student debt retirement, inflation reduction act, and other things could entice younger voters to vote for Democratic candidates and show them that they represent their interests more.
According to recent polling conducted by the voter organization, Voto Latino and the student debt cancellation advocacy group, Biden’s plan may have some success among younger voters who identify as moderate Republicans.
Young voters love the president’s plan for student debt relief. A whopping 48% of young voters agree with the plan, and a majority of them say they will vote for Democrats.
The NPR survey taken in September shows Biden at 48% approval among younger voters, a 5 point increase from August and a 30 point increase from July.
Biden vs the Education Department in a High-Sensitivity Campaign against Student Loan Forgiveness and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Plus, over the past several weeks, a number of Republican-led states have challenged Biden’s executive action in court – arguing it is an illegal overreach of presidential authority.
He said young people prefer it when the government listens to them. If there’s one thing young people don’t like, it’s the government. The court took it away.
Those who meet the program’s annual income limits — up to $125,000 per individual or $250,000 per household — can apply online at https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief/application.
The Education Department quietly opened an application website for testing on Friday night, which was the night before the SATs. More than eight million people had already applied by Monday, Mr. Biden said. The form is available in English and Spanish, and is intended to work on desktop computers and mobile devices.
Supreme Court Justice Amy ConeyBarrett refused to take up an appeal from a Wisconsin taxpayers group, rejecting the challenge to the student loan forgiveness program.
The Brown County Taxpayers Association did not have legal right to bring the challenge and the appeal was considered an uphill battle. The taxpayers do not have the right to sue the government over how it uses taxpayer funds.
The lower court that ruled on the case had jurisdiction to do so. She declined to refer the matter to the full court. Her denial appeared as a single sentence on the court’s docket.
A judge rejected a separate lawsuit brought by six Republican states because they didn’t have the right to bring it.
The states are expected to immediately appeal. The case will be sent to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, where it will likely face conservative judges.
The Biden administration is being sued by the Arizona Attorney General and other conservative groups.
An easy application to apply for debt relief at the Brown County Taxpayers Association’s Web site (MoserFundamento.com)
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is assigned to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, was the one who received the emergency application. The other justices probably agreed with her decision.
The emergency request to the Supreme Court was brought by the Brown County Taxpayers Association, a Wisconsin organization made up of around 100 taxpaying individuals and business owners that advocates for conservative economic policy.
The plan has been challenged by several other conservative organizations. Those lawsuits are percolating in various lower courts, though they may face similar difficulty showing a specific harm to stay alive.
Other aspects of the situation are less simple. Student loan forgiveness is subject to intense political disagreement and multiple lawsuits. On Friday, a federal appeals court halted the discharge of debt. But borrowers can still submit applications and the Biden administration immediately made it clear that it would like them to do so. The White House said that the order didn’t change the trial court’s decision to dismiss the case.
The first week of the website’s opening yielded twenty-one million applications, eight million of which were submitted on the first weekend, far less than the six people who successfully negotiated the site’s launch last year. As professors of public policy, we have shared our research on how administrative burdens make vital public services harder to access with the Biden administration, and we spoke with Department of Education officials about how many people might participate in the program (though we played no role in helping design this process or the application itself). It was amazing to see how easy it is to apply for debt relief.
Setting aside the conflict over policy, the streamlined application shows what is possible when government prioritizes the public in the delivery of public services. The form can be completed in just a couple of minutes. It is available in English and Spanish, and works on both a computer and a phone. The welcome page, a form and a confirmation page are the only pages that applicants need to apply. Beneficiaries do not have to create an account with a password, a seemingly small step that can actually discourage people from starting. Applicants need five pieces of information: name, social security number, date of birth, phone number and email address. There is only one thing left.
The Texas Department of Education’s Student Debt Relief Program and the Judiciary’s Role in the Courts of the Supreme Court
The Texas federal judge found that the law did not give the executive branch clear authority to create the student loan forgiveness program.
The program is unconstitutional because it is an exercise of Congress’s legislative power, said Mark Pittman, who was nominated by Donald Trump.
The Justice Department said Thursday that it would appeal the decision, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that “we strongly disagree with the District Court’s ruling on our student debt relief program.”
The 26 million borrowers who have already given the Department of Education the necessary information will hold onto their information so that it can process their relief once we prevail in court.
They argued that they could not voice their disagreement with the program’s rules because the administration did not put it through a formal notice-and-comment rule making process under the Administrative Procedure Act.
“This ruling protects the rule of law which requires all Americans to have their voices heard by their federal government,” said Elaine Parker, president of Job Creators Network Foundation, in a statement Thursday.
Steve is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a CNN legal analyst. He is the author of the upcoming book “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.” The opinions he expresses in this commentary are not of his own. View more opinion at CNN.
It is difficult for Brown or Taylor to show how their injuries could have been compensated by the courts if the program is illegal, due to the rest of Pittman’s analysis. Brown and Taylor were provided with nothing by the ruling block the program on a nationwide basis.
The courts can provide at least some redress for injuries if the case has a standing that shows an injury in fact and that the injury is fairly traced to the alleged wrongful conduct.
Standing is a technical doctrine that is important. Justice Samuel Alito stated that no principle is more fundamental to the judiciarys proper role in our system of government.
It isn’t the federal court’s job to answer questions or resolve policy disputes. If a party can prove how they were harmed by the challenged policy in a way that is specific to them, they’ll be allowed to challenge it.
If the complaint is that the government is acting in ways that don’t affect the person who filed them, that’s a matter for the political process. As Justice Antonin Scalia put it 30 years ago, “vindicating the public interest (including the public interest in Government observance of the Constitution and laws) is the function of Congress and the Chief Executive.”
In that respect, Pittman’s ruling, and the public discourse surrounding the student loan debt relief program more generally, is also a helpful reminder that not every policy dispute should lead to litigation – and that it’s not the job of the courts to resolve every contentious issue in American politics.
Instead, objections to the Biden program present the classic kind of “generalized grievance” that the Supreme Court has long held federal courts lack the constitutional authority to resolve – like when a taxpayer tried to sue the CIA in an attempt to force the agency to provide a public accounting of its (allegedly unlawful) expenditures.
If Justice Alito is correct, no principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of government than the idea that courts can only decide cases in which there is actual, justiciable controversies between adverse parties. Otherwise, the courts aren’t acting as courts; they’re just taking sides in policy debates that no one elected them to resolve.
The High Court Action on Biden’s Student Loan Indemnity Coverage Under the Covid-19 Outbreak: The Case of a Group of States
Payments will resume 60 days after the debt cancellation program is implemented, 60 days after the lawsuits are resolved or 60 days after June 30, if litigation fails.
The White House said that Tuesday’s extension will alleviate uncertainty for borrowers as the administration asks the Supreme Court to review lower court orders blocking Biden’s student debt relief program.
The student loan forgiveness program is currently on hold and will be argued in February by the US Supreme Court.
The challenge was brought by two individuals who are not qualified for full debt relief forgiveness and who weren’t allowed to comment on the Education Secretary’s decision to provide targeted student loan debt relief to some.
The justices will hear arguements in a case brought by a group of states. The court didn’t say whether the cases would be consolidated.
The court’s action Monday does not change the state of play as the program has already been frozen while legal challenges play out. It adds new people to the mix.
The justices had been urged by Elizabeth Prelogar to lift the block on the program and listen to oral arguments this term. They agreed to the last request.
Prelogar argued in court papers that two cases had already resulted in nationwide orders preventing the Secretary of Education from using his authority to help student-loan borrowers who have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak.