A Texas federal judge blocked United States President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan that would have benefited millions of borrowers, marking a victory for a conservative advocacy group that filed the lawsuit against the program.
The advocacy group, the Job Creators Network Foundation, filed the lawsuit in October on behalf of a borrower who did not qualify for the full $20,000 debt relief and another who was entirely ineligible. The lawsuit claimed that the Biden administration violated federal procedures by denying borrowers the opportunity to provide public comment before revealing the program.
Student Loan Forgiveness Program Blocked
In the Thursday order, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by former United States President Donald Trump, declared the student loan forgiveness plan unlawful. Pittman said that in the U.S., citizens are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.
The Biden administration did not immediately make comments regarding Pittman's ruling but officials have noted previously that they would fight any order that sought to block the debt relief program, as per the Washington Post.
The judge's order also comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit granted a stay last month against the student loan forgiveness program in a separate lawsuit. That lawsuit was brought forward by six Republican-led states.
The cases against Biden's relief program are a growing number of legal challenges that seek to prevent the Democrat's plan from being implemented. Some of the lawsuits, including one that was filed in Indiana and another in Wisconsin, have been dismissed for lack of standing, but others are still ongoing.
According to CNN, Judge Pittman's ruling comes as Biden's debt relief program was already on hold over a separate legal challenge. The Biden administration has also argued that Congress had already given the secretary of education the power to broadly discharge student loan debt in a 2003 law that is known as the HEROES Act.
Unconstitutional Exercise of Legislative Power
However, the Texas federal judge found that the law did not provide the executive branch with clear congressional authorization to create the student loan forgiveness program. Pittman said that the program was thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' legislative power and ordered it to be vacated.
The situation comes as just last week, nearly 26 million student loan forgiveness applications were submitted. Under the debt relief plan, individual borrowers who earned less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who earned less than $250,000 per year in those years, are eligible to have up to $10,000 of their federal student loan forgiven.
If a borrower who was qualified for the program also received a federal Pell grant while being enrolled in college, that individual would be eligible for up to $20,000 of student debt relief. The cancellation applies to federal student loans that were used to attend undergraduate and graduate school, along with Parent Plus loans.
While the student loan forgiveness program was still on hold due to legal challenges, the Biden administration encouraged borrowers to continue applying for the program. Officials said that the court orders did not prevent applications or the review of applications, NPR reported.
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