By Nicole Wells
The Biden administration called on the Supreme Court to reinstate the president’s latest student loan forgiveness plan in an emergency appeal filed on Tuesday.
According to The Hill, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the justices to temporarily lift a lower court ruling that is blocking the implementation of President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which would reduce monthly student loan payments for millions of borrowers.
“The rule is a straightforward exercise of the Department’s express statutory authority to set the parameters of income-contingent repayment plans — just as it has done for three decades,” Prelogar wrote in the appeal.
In the event the high court does not intervene on its emergency docket, Prelogar asked that the justices examine the legality of the SAVE plan on the merits in an expedited fashion so oral arguments can take place in the fall.
The move is similar to how the Biden administration responded when its earlier student debt plan was challenged. The Supreme Court struck down that plan last year in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines that came after the Justice Department filed a demand for emergency action.
The president’s most recent attempt at student debt relief was introduced in the wake of the Supreme Court’s rejection of his previous plan.
In the first phase of the SAVE plan, which began last fall, the income shielded from payments was raised from 150% to 225% above the federal poverty guidelines and unpaid interest outside the calculated payments was waived.
Payments on undergraduate student loans were set to drop in the second phase in July, going from 10% to 5% of discretionary income, along with other loan forgiveness options for certain borrowers.
The Department of Education has placed the loans of the millions who signed up for the new income-driven repayment plan into forbearance until its legality is decided by the court.
Two separate groups of Republican state attorneys general have filed legal challenges to the plan, with each arguing that the hefty price tag — estimated at $475 billion over 10 years — mandates explicit congressional authorization.
On Friday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the seven states involved in the first case — Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma — and issued a temporary injunction to prevent the SAVE plan from being implemented as the case plays out.
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The Biden administration’s emergency appeal on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to lift the 8th Circuit’s ruling as the lawsuit moves forward and also called on the justices to deny the emergency appeal filed by a group of three states in the second case.
In that case, Alaska, South Carolina, and Texas requested last month that the high court temporarily block key provisions of the president’s plan. They also requested that the justices consider the legality of the plan on the merits and immediately overturn it without oral arguments.