Supreme Court considers fate of Biden’s student loan relief plan

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, with several conservative justices appearing skeptical of the government’s authority to discharge millions of dollars in federally held loans.

If the conservatives do ultimately rule in favor of the policy’s challengers, the hearing made clear they will have to grapple with the legal questions around why states and individual borrowers should be allowed to sue over the program – questions that emerged as a flash point during the arguments.

Millions of qualifying student loan borrowers could see up to $20,000 of their debt canceled depending on the outcome of the arguments. How and when the justices rule will also determine when payments on federal student loans will resume after a pandemic-related pause was put in place nearly three years ago.

In Biden v. Nebraska, a group of Republican-led states argued the administration exceeded its authority by using the pandemic as a pretext to mask the true goal of fulfilling a campaign promise to erase student-loan debt.

The second case is Department of Education v. Brown, which was initially brought by two individuals who did not qualify for the program and argue the government failed to follow proper rulemaking process when putting it in place.

Here are some takeaways from the oral arguments:

Conservatives see this case as another chance to rein in aggressive actions by Biden: In the questions the conservative justices posed, they signaled that they see the GOP states’ case as presenting the court with another chance to draw the lines around when the executive branch can and cannot act without Congress.

Several of the exchanges concerned the application of the so-called “Major Questions Doctrine,” a legal theory embraced by the court’s Republican appointees that says Congress can be expected to speak with specificity when it gives an agency power to do something of great political or economic significance.

The states are arguing that under the doctrine, the Biden student debt program should be blocked.

Chief Justice John Roberts said to US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar that the case “presents extraordinarily serious important issues about the role of Congress.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Prelogar to compare the dispute to cases in the court’s history where the court ultimately pushed back against government claims that a national emergency justified the aggressive, unilateral action by the executive branch. And Justice Neil Gorsuch asked Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell, who is representing the red states, a series a questions that seemed aimed at helping the court further flesh out the doctrine.

Lawyer for GOP state gets grilled on standing: Whether the GOP states are threatened by the type of harm that makes it appropriate for a court to intervene was a major theme. Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell received a series of questions – from justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum – about whether the states had overcome this procedural threshold, which is known as “standing.”

A particular flashpoint in the hearing was the states’ arguments that the loan forgiveness program’s potential harms to MOHELA – the Missouri-created entity that services loans in the state – gives Missouri standing. Several justices noted that MOHELA could have filed its own lawsuit challenging the program, but has not.

Barrett may be a justice to watch: Justice Amy Coney Barrett has stood out among the conservatives for asking particularly pointed questions of the GOP states about their standing arguments, setting her apart as a potential pick up vote for the court’s three liberal members.

“If MOHELA is an arm of the state, why didn’t you just strong-arm MOHELA and say you’ve got to pursue this suit,” Barrett asked Campbell, among several questions she asked him about the states’ standing claims.

Even if Barrett swings to the liberals to vote that the lawsuit should be rejected because of the standing concerns, the Biden administration will need the vote of one more GOP-appointed justice.

Sotomayor raises the practical stakes of the case: In extended remarks to Campbell, Justice Sonia Sotomayor laid out the practical implications of the case in stark terms.

“There’s 50 million students who are – who will benefit from this. Who today will struggle. Many of them don’t have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic. They don’t have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments,” she remarked. Those debtors will suffer in ways others won’t because of the pandemic, she said.

“And what you’re saying is now we’re going to give judges the right to decide how much aid to give them instead of the person with the expertise and the experience the secretary of Education who’s been dealing with educational issues and the problems surrounding student loans,” she said.

Read more takeaways here.

President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 of student loans for some people is on pause as challenges make their way through the court system — but experts say there is a college affordability problem that needs to be addressed.

Mamie Voight, the president and CEO of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, said states have an important role in accomplishing this. States need to invest “really heavily in their public institutions to keep those tuition costs low for students” and minimize the need to borrow.

One example, she said, is states’ ability to direct grant aid and help students, particularly from low-income backgrounds, cover both the cost of tuition and the cost of living.

When students are deciding where to go to college and how to pay for it, the idea is that “they’re able to piece together investments from the federal government through the Pell Grant, hopefully relatively low tuition costs because of state investment in public higher education and grants and scholarships from the institutions that are directed to students who really couldn’t afford to go to college without that financial support,” Voight said.

If the affordability issue isn’t solved, higher education and the opportunity for economic mobility, won’t be attainable for many people, Voight said.

“It’s really incumbent upon policy maker at the federal, state and institution level to really address these challenges” both in the short-term and the long-term, she said, stressing that idea of a shared partnership.

Elizabeth Shermer, a historian and associate professor at Loyola University Chicago, said she agrees with the importance of state involvement.

The way forward, in her opinion, is legislation that connects states and the federal government together on the issue by creating high-quality, tuition-free options for students to put pressure on four-year institutions to lower their tuition prices.

She said she supports the proposed College for All Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, that would do this. Alternatively, offering two free years of community college would also accomplish that same competition she believes is necessary for long-term change.

The Supreme Court finished hearing oral arguments in two cases challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

What may happen next: Under normal circumstances, a case with such high political stakes would likely be resolved in late June or early July. But because the justices expedited the briefing, there is a possibility they may prioritize the opinion and release it before the end of the term.

If the Supreme Court rules that the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program is legal and allows it to move forward — or if the court dismisses the challenges due to a lack of “standing,” or the legal right to bring the disputes in the first place — it’s possible the government will begin issuing some debt cancellations fairly quickly.

If the court strikes down the program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is now at the podium again to deliver her rebuttal and closing arguments.

During today’s hearing, Prelogar has argued that the administration has the clear legal authority to provide relief to borrowers in order to protect them from the financial harms brought on by the pandemic, such as the inability to buy food or make rent or mortgage payments.

She stressed that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 —known as the HEROES ACT— provides the legal authority for the relief. She will also say that the states do not have the sufficient injury necessary to bring the claim in the first place.

Prelogar told the Supreme Court that it should not be thinking about the political debate over student debt that predated the pandemic when the justices consider whether Biden’s forgiveness program is lawful.

The court’s liberals pushed back on how conservative justices had focused on whether the Biden student debt relief program was fair to all borrowers. The issue is key to the case the court is hearing now, because the challengers – two borrowers – claim they were unlawfully deprived of a notice-and-comment period to argue to the agency that the program wasn’t fair to them.

“I think the bottom-line answer to be, everybody suffered in the pandemic. But different people got different benefits because they qualified under different programs, correct?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted to US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

Sotomayor: There is an “inherent unfairness in society because we’re not a society of unlimited resources.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson echoed that point, telling Prelogar, “I’m wondering whether or not the same fairness issue would arise with respect to any federal benefit programs.”

Attorney J. Michael Connolly is now taking the podium on behalf of two student borrowers — Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor.

Connolly works for the boutique law firm Consovoy McCarthy, which also represented former President Donald Trump in some of his legal battles.

Connolly is likely to repeat what he said in briefs, that the HEROES Act “does not authorize the Secretary to cancel nearly half-a-trillion dollars in debts held by tens of millions of individuals.”

This case may not go as long as the first because so many of the issues are the same. Prelogar is then expected return to end the marathon session.

What happens next: Under normal circumstances, a case with such high political stakes would likely be resolved in late June or early July. But because the justices expedited the briefing, there is a possibility they may prioritize the opinion and release it before the end of the term.

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court that it should not be thinking about the political debate over student debt that predated the pandemic when the justices consider whether Biden’s forgiveness program is lawful.

She was responding to a question from Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He noted that student debt relief was “something on the table,” that was being “discussed’ and “debated” before it became part of the government’s response to the Covid-19.

Prelogar discouraged the justices from taking those political dynamics into account in their ruling on the scope of the HEROES Act, the law that the Biden administration says gives it the authority to enact the program.

She told Kavanaugh to put himself in the shoes of the 2003 Congress hat passed that law. She argued that those lawmakers couldn’t have anticipated whether or not debt relief was the subject of political debate when a national emergency in the form a pandemic hit.

She said that if the court lets those political dynamics affect its ruling, it will have “disabled” Congress’ ability to pass laws to ensure that the executive branch can respond quickly to emergency.

The conservative justices have peppered US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar with questions about why President Joe Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness program is fair in respect to people who won’t benefit — those who have already paid off their student debt or never took out student loans to begin with, for example.

After justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, asked several times about the fairness of the program, Justice Samuel Alito posed the question again.

“My answer to that question is that Congress has already made the judgment that when there is a national emergency that affects borrowers in this way, the secretary can provide relief,” Prelogar said.

She pointed to language in the HEROES Act that says the education secretary can waive or modify federal student loan programs to ensure that borrowers “are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance.”

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the two plaintiffs – student loan borrowers Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor — don’t have the legal right, or “standing,” to bring the case.

Under President Joe Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness program, neither plaintiff would qualify for the maximum amount of debt relief. Brown doesn’t qualify at all because her loans are privately held and Taylor is only eligible for up to $10,000 of debt relief — not up to $20,000 — because he did not receive a Pell grant while enrolled in college.

“They claim to want greater loan forgiveness than the plan provides. But they asked this court to hold that the HEROES Act doesn’t authorize loan forgiveness at all,” Prelogar said.

If the Biden program is struck down, not only would the plaintiffs get no relief at all, but no one else would either.

“Parties cannot go to court to make themselves and everyone else worse off,” Prelogar said.

The key legal question in the cases before the Supreme Court on Tuesday is whether the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, known as the HEROES Act, grants the executive branch an emergency power to implement President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The HEROES Act, which was passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, grants the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify” a federal student loan program in order to ensure that individuals “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

Lawyers for the Biden administration argue that this provision gives the secretary of education the authority to cancel federal student loan debt so that borrowers are not made worse off with respect to their loans by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

They cite data that shows borrowers who previously had their payments paused due to an emergency like a hurricane were at a higher risk of default after the pause expired.

But plaintiffs argue the Biden administration is abusing its power and using the pandemic as a pretext for fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to cancel student debt.

Even before ruling on the merits of the cases, the justices must consider whether the suing parties have standing to bring the legal challenges. This means that the parties must show that they have the legal injury necessary to be able to bring the challenge.

Last year, a district court found that the states did not have standing to sue. The states appealed to the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted their request for a preliminary injunction.

If the justices decide that none of the parties have standing, the cases will be dismissed and Biden’s program will be allowed to move forward.

The Supreme Court has now moved on to hear arguments in the second case challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

It just finished hearing arguments from a case brought by six states. The second case was initially brought by two student borrowers.

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is back at the podium. She is expected to say that the students – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor — like the states, don’t have the legal right to bring the case. She is likely to emphasize that the borrowers didn’t qualify for full relief in the first place, so they won’t be injured if the plan goes into effect.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh sought some context on how the court should see the current dispute over student debt relief fitting within the larger spectrum of other cases dealing with executive branch actions aimed at the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kavanaugh referenced the court rulings that blocked Biden’s eviction moratorium and the Covid-19 vaccine mandate requirement for certain businesses. But he also noted the Biden administration vaccine mandate for some health care facilities.

Kavanaugh told Nebraska Solicitor General James A. Campbell that one of the key distinctions in the health care vaccine mandate cases is that the policy was in the “wheelhouse” of the CDC, the agency that implemented it. He asked the Nebraska solicitor general to weigh in on the argument by the DOJ and others that loan forgiveness is also in the “wheelhouse” of the Education Department, distinguishing it from the cases where the court ruled against Biden Covid-19 policies.

Campbell said that the loan forgiveness policy was not in the Education Department’s wheelhouse because it required the secretary to make a brand new cancellation program.

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is now offering a rebuttal in the first case challenging the Biden administration’s plan to forgive student loans.

Nebraska’s Solicitor General James A. Campbell was just at the podium arguing on behalf of the six Republican-led states that say they would be harmed financially if the forgiveness program goes into effect.

Prelogar has been arguing that the Department of Education has the authority to implement debt cancellation.

After this, the court is expected to hear arguments in the second case brought by two borrowers who don’t fully qualify for debt forgiveness under the program.

The justices have spent a considerable amount of time on Tuesday quizzing an attorney for the red states on why a student loan servicer created by Missouri didn’t bring the lawsuit before the court.

“Usually, we don’t allow one person to step into another’s shoes and say, ‘I think that that person suffered harm,’ even if the harm is very great,” Justice Elena Kagan said to Nebraska Solicitor General James A. Campbell. “So why isn’t MOHELA responsible for deciding whether to bring this suit?”

The questions dig at the core of the Biden administration’s argument: that the states lack the legal right known as “standing” to challenge the debt relief program and that instead, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) should have sued, since the servicer would have easily cleared the standing threshold.

A federal appeals court previously focused on one of the states behind the challenge, Missouri, and pointed to MOHELA, which has contracted with the federal Department of Education to service student loans. The court said that because MOHELA will stop receiving servicing fees for loans discharged under the new plan, it won’t be able to fulfill its obligation to contribute a specified amount of money to the state treasury. The appeals court ruled MOHELA is akin to a state entity and therefore said that it satisfied the standing requirement.

Critics of that theory say that MOHELA was established with financial and legal independence from the state of Missouri and the vast amount of its funds are segregated from state funds. They believe that for the purpose of the lawsuit, MOHELA cannot be considered an “arm of the state.”

White House officials on Tuesday are closely monitoring oral arguments that are getting underway before the Supreme Court, keenly aware that what happens today inside the nation’s highest court will determine the fate of a major policy priority for President Joe Biden – canceling student loan debt.

The White House has expressed confidence it will prevail.

One of the main reasons comes down to standing, the source said, arguing that the burden is currently on the six Republican-led states and two borrowers in Texas — who have brought two cases against the administration — to prove that they have the legal authority to challenge the proposed program. Last year, a district court found that the states did not have standing to sue.

Biden announced last year a federal student loan forgiveness program that would forgive up to $20,000 in debt for some borrowers. The legal challenges have left many borrowers stuck in limbo.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the matter is not expected until this summer.

Justice Elena Kagan expressed skepticism about the states’ argument that the HEROES Act doesn’t clearly give the education secretary the authority to cancel federal student debt in the case of an emergency.

“Congress used its voice,” Kagan said.
“All this business about executive power, I mean, we worry about executive power when Congress hasn’t authorized the use of executive power. Here, Congress has authorized the use of executive power in an emergency situation,” she added.

Kagan stressed that she believes that Congress made the statute very clear in this respect.

“Congress doesn’t get much clearer than that. And we deal with congressional statutes every day that are really confusing. This one is not,” she added.

As the nine justices hear oral arguments inside the Supreme Court, CNN spoke to people outside the building rallying for President Joe Biden’s plan for student loan debt forgiveness .

Here’s what some of them said:

Destiny Perry, a first-generation college student at Morgan State University in Baltimore, lives in a single-parent household of five.

“Right now, I have taken out a lot of loans. … I’m out here trying to just go through college without having to stress about all the payments and everything else,” Perry said.

Perry said she explores scholarship opportunities to offset the debt, but she knows it will not be enough to graduate debt-free. 

Glen Lopez, a freshman at Morgan State, described his student debt as a “creeping feeling.” He said that he thinks about the debt “every two to three days.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley told CNN she knows about student debt from a personal perspective.

“Well, what I was sharing is a story that is certainly no anomaly. This is a systemic crisis – a nearly $2 trillion crisis burning people from every walk of life,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. 

“Like those millions of Black borrowers – and I was growing up in single-parent household — and given financial strain, I had no choice but to take out those loans. I ultimately defaulted on those loans and I did pay off those loans, but it took me 20 plus years to do so. And I was gainfully employed and often living check to check and I simply could just not make ends meet. I just could not get ahead,” she said.

In response to opponents’ arguments that people should pay the loans they take out, Pressley said that “hardship is not a character flaw.”

“And despite people’s Herculean efforts working multiple jobs, given rising costs, people are treading water. They’re treading water, and we can do something to alleviate this burden and this hardship,” she said.

Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, said she did not imagine the movement for student debt forgiveness getting this far.

“Over a decade ago, when we started this organization, we were lucky to just have Senator [Elizabeth] Warren fighting for us. We had one senator and were so happy. I never would have imagined 10 years later we’d be on the steps of the Supreme Court and having the President of the United States fight for student loan borrowers,” she told CNN.

Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell, who is representing all the GOP states suing over the debt relief program, received tough questions from several justices about whether the states have really proved that they would be harmed by the loan forgiveness program in a way that would warrant a court intervention.

That line of questions included a grilling from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who zeroed in on how MOHELA — the Missouri-created entity that services loans in the state and which Missouri is pointed to as giving it standing — could have opted to challenge in court the debt relief policy but hasn’t.

“If MOHELA is an arm of the state, why didn’t you just strong-arm MOHELA and say you’ve got to pursue this suit,” Barrett asked Campbell. He said that was a matter of state politics and Justice Elena Kagan jumped in to note that even to get records from MOHELA, Missouri has to use a state open records law.

Before Barrett’s inquiries, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also pressed Campbell on whether the supposed harms the loan forgiveness program was causing MOHELA really established standing for Missouri, as did Kagan, who highlighted MOHELA’s absence from the lawsuit.

A case concerning a moratorium that had been placed on evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic keeps coming up in Tuesday’s student debt relief policy arguments. 

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar tried to draw a distinction between the two cases while answering a series of questions from Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction case brought up concerns of an agency acting “outside the core of its domain,” but that is not what is happening with the Department of Education.

“This is the student loan program. That falls within the wheelhouse of the Secretary of Education. He exercises comprehensive authority over that program. These are federal loans between the federal government and student loan borrowers, so this is a situation where the secretary is really acting within the core of his expertise and his authority,” Prelogar said.

Those challenging the student debt forgiveness say there are parallels between the two cases, while the Biden administration argues the disputes are distinct. 

The eviction moratorium case did not even get a full hearing before the Supreme Court. What has been cited by President Joe Biden’s foes is a per curium order — an unsigned order from the Supreme Court that blocked the CDC policy that tenants could not get evicted while the moratorium was in place.

The case was seen as a forerunner to the Supreme Court’s full-scale endorsement — in a case handed down in June — of the so-called major questions doctrine, which says that if Congress is going to give the agency the power to make policy on a matter of significant political or economic consequence, lawmakers can be expected to say so with specificity in the laws that they pass. 

“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” the court said in the August 2021 order. The liberals on the court at the time dissented.

Opponents of the student debt program say that Tuesday’s case arises in similar circumstances as the eviction moratorium dispute: an executive branch agency allegedly using the pandemic as a pretext to go beyond the authority that Congress has given it to enact a major policy change. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar the opportunity to stress how a ruling that said the states had standing in this case could hamper the federal government’s ability to operate.

“I guess I’m concerned that we’re going to have a problem in terms of the federal government’s ability to operate,” the justice said. “So my question is, is this a legitimate concern and should we be thinking in cases like this, about that type of concern as we ponder whether to expand our standing doctrines?”

Prelogar agreed that it was a “legitimate concern.” She noted that past things the court has said about standing and how “the judiciary doesn’t sit as a roving commission to rule on the legality of either Congress’s enactments or the executive’s implementation of those enactments.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in comments to US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, suggested he saw the student debt case existing in a history of the court deciding whether it would defer to an executive branch claim that a national emergency warranted aggressive unilateral action.

The Biden administration is arguing that the national emergency presented by the Covid-19 pandemic — and the economic disruption the pandemic wrought — justified the education secretary canceling the student loans of certain debtors.

“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency power, and that’s continued not just in the Korean War, but post-9/11, in some of the cases there.”

He asked Prelogar to explain to the court “how we should think about our role in assertion of presidential emergency power, given the court’s history. ”

Prelogar returned to a theme that she has brought up repeatedly in Tuesday’s arguments: that there is distinction between an executive action that regulates people’s conduct versus an action that deals with the doling out of government benefits.

Justice Clarence Thomas questioned US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar about the distinction between the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness program and grants that Congress needs to appropriate.

“There’s some discussion in the briefs …. that this is in effect a cancellation of a debt, that’s really what we’re talking about, and that as a cancellation of $400 billion in debt, in effect this is a grant of $400 billion and it runs headlong into Congress’ appropriations authority,” Thomas said.

Prelogar said that implementing the debt relief program doesn’t require that any money be drawn from the Treasury, so it doesn’t strictly raise an appropriations issue.

She also said while loan forgiveness would “of course” result in cancellation of a measure of debt for borrowers, she doesn’t “think that that is materially different from the kind of effects you can see from other types of authority that’s long been exercised under the HEROES Act.”

Thomas said he didn’t think she fully explained why you could not argue that the education secretary could just grant $400 billion — which would require appropriations from Congress.

Prelogar gave an example of relief in periods of extended deferment for soldiers fighting abroad, in which the government has paid interest on loans.

“That’s exactly what Congress intended under this authority; it’s to make those changes to the program in direct response to and in direct proportion to the situation the secretary confronts that will otherwise leave that borrower worse off,” she said.

Nebraska’s Solicitor General James A. Campbell is now speaking at the podium before the nine justices after US solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrapped her arguments on behalf of the Biden administration.

Campbell is representing the six states that say they would be harmed financially if President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program goes into effect.

He is expected to offer several theories to explain why the states will be injured by the plan. Most of his theories revolve around the potential of lost tax revenue. He’s also expected to stress that the plan amounts to an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.

Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that he saw the student debt forgiveness as an important opportunity for the court to further flesh out its “Major Questions Doctrine.”

“We take very seriously the idea of separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse,” Roberts told US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. He said that the case reminded him of a decision from the Trump administration where the court blocked Trump’s efforts to end the “Dreamers” program for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors.

“I just wonder, given the posture of the case and given our historic concern about the separation of powers, you would recognize at least that this is a case that presents extraordinarily serious important issues about the role of Congress and about the role that we should exercise in scrutinizing that, significant enough that the Major Questions Doctrine ought to be considered implicated?” Roberts said.

Remember: Under the “Major Questions Doctrine,” if an agency acts in a way that could have major political or economic implications, it must have the authority of Congress. The states are saying here that essentially, the college debt relief plan is too big for the Biden administration to use the authority in its citing.

Justice Neil Gorsuch asked whether the Biden administration considered the cost to people who are not eligible for the proposed student loan forgiveness program because they don’t have student loans.

The plaintiffs said that missing from the government’s analysis, Gorsuch said, is the “cost to other persons in terms of fairness, for example, people who’ve paid their loans… and people who are not eligible for loans in the first place.”

More context: Americans who did not go to college or already paid off their student loans won’t see a direct benefit from Biden’s program, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $400 billion over time. Also, a one-time cancellation of federal student loan debt does nothing to bring down the cost of college for future borrowers.

About 81% of households who earn less than $125,000 a year don’t have student loan debt, according to an analysis done last year by Matthew Chingos, vice president of education data and policy at the Urban Institute. He based the estimation on the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances conducted by the Federal Reserve.

Justice Neil Gorsuch brought up the court’s decision in 2019 that blocked former President Donald Trump’s plans to add a citizenship question to the census. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s then-four liberals to rule in favor of the question’s challengers and that ruling is one of the cases that the opponents to student debt relief are citing to back their standing arguments.

Gorsuch noted Tuesday that the court said in the census case, that the potential undercount of the citizenship question would cause New York established standing for New York to bring that case, because an undercount would have cost New York federal funding and a loss in other benefits.

“That kind of knock-on effect was sufficient to constitute standing in that case, and I just like to get your thoughts on how you’d have us distinguish that?” Gorsuch asked.

Prelogar said that in the census case the injury that would have been caused by an undercount was more direct, and that in the student debt case, the financial injuries the states were claiming were “self inflicted.”

RELATED: Exclusive: How John Roberts killed the census citizenship question

The so-called “Major Questions Doctrine” is already seeing a lot of attention as the red states’ case is debated before the justices on Tuesday.

But what exactly is it?

Last term, the court cited the “Major Questions Doctrine” in a 6-3 decision that curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

Under the theory, if an agency acts in a way that could have major political or economic implications, it must have the authority of Congress. The states are saying here that essentially, the college debt relief plan is too big for the Biden administration to use the authority in its citing.

It’s an argument that will appeal to the court’s conservatives and their 6-3 majority over the liberals. Justice Samuel Alito, for instance, brought it up.

“Well, of course, we think Congress did address this expressly here. And Congress directed that in the context of a national emergency – that is the limitation of the HEROES Act.” Prelogar replied.

“The (Education) secretary acted within the heartland of his authority and in line with the central purpose of the HEROES Act in providing that relief here. To apply the Major Questions Doctrine to override that clear text will deny borrowers critical relief that Congress authorized and the secretary deemed essential,” Prelogar said.

Chief Justice John Roberts drew attention to the fact that the Biden administration wants to use a power to “modify” federal student loan programs in order to cancel roughly $400 billion in debt.

“In an opinion we had a few years ago by Justice (Antonin) Scalia, he talked about what the word ‘modify’ means, and he said ‘modified’ in our view connotes moderate change,” Roberts said.

“It might be good English to say that the French Revolution modified the status of the French nobility, but only because there’s a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm,” Roberts said.

“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modified?” Roberts asked.

The Biden administration argues it has the power to cancel federal student loan debt under a 2003 law called the HEREOS Act. But the law does not explicitly say the secretary of education has the power to cancel or forgive student loan debt.

Instead, the law says the secretary of education has the power to “waive or modify” a federal student loan program in order to ensure that individuals “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that in the context of the statute, “modify has to mean making a change up to the point of wholesale elimination.”

“It would be really strange for Congress to say you can eliminate obligations altogether or tweak them just the littlest bit. But you can’t do anything in between,” she said.

It did not take long for the issue of so-called “standing” to come up in Tuesday’s arguments on the student loan relief program.

What does this mean? “Standing” refers to the harm a plaintiff must show they are facing in order for a court to intervene. The Biden administration argues that the challengers in the student debt forgiveness case have not overcome this procedural threshold, meaning that the Supreme Court could reject their case without even getting into the legal merits of the relief program.

Justice Samuel Alito dug in on the issue in questions to US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and signaled that he was sympathetic to the argument that the states suing the administration had established standing. He pointed specifically to Missouri’s claim that that the revenue shortfalls the Biden action could cause the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) — an entity that was created by the state to service student loans — could cause knock-on financial harms to Missouri itself.

“Why shouldn’t the test be something more like whether the relationship between this entity and the state of Missouri is such that an injury to MOHELA will necessarily or presumptive be an injury to the state,” Alito said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ultimately jumped in, to back up an argument Prelogar was making: that the financial interests of Missouri and MOHELA were not sufficiently entangled to give Missouri standing.

Justice Clarence Thomas kicked off the oral arguments with the first round of questions, asking US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar how the mass loan forgiveness amounts to the terminology used in the relevant statute.

“Would you take a minute to explain how a waiver or modification amounts to a …cancellation,” Thomas said.

The Biden administration’s foes in the case say that the terms “waive” or “modify” in the law giving the Education secretary certain powers applies to smaller bore actions to adjust repayment plants, rather than a blank cancellation of classes of debt.

Prelogar told Thomas that the law in question, the HEROES Act, contemplates many forms of action an Education secretary could take in the face of a national emergency.

Congress was trying to “cover the field” to give the secretary tools to respond to a national emergency, she said.

The Supreme Court is now hearing oral arguments on two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program – an initiative aimed at providing targeted debt relief to millions of student-loan borrowers – that has so far been stalled by legal challenges.

Republican-led states and conservatives challenging the program say it amounts to an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.

At the heart of the case is the Department of Education’s authority to forgive the loans. Several of the conservative justices have signaled in recent years that agencies – with no direct accountability to the public – have become too powerful, upsetting the separation of powers. They have moved to cut back on the so-called administrative state.

Tuesday’s cases will also highlight an important threshold question that could block the court from reaching the merits of the dispute: whether the parties behind the challenge have the legal right, or “standing,” necessary to bring suit.

What both sides are arguing: The Biden administration argues that the secretary of education had the clear authority to provide the relief to borrowers making less than $125,000 per year ($250,000 for households) in 2020 or 2021 in order to protect them from financial harms brought on by the pandemic such as the inability to buy food or make rent or mortgage payments.

As for the states, Nebraska Attorney General Michael T. Hilgers, who is also representing Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina, stressed that the Biden administration exceeded its authority by using the pandemic as a pretext to mask the true goal of fulfilling a campaign promise to erase student-loan debt.

Desiree Veney, a senior at Morgan State University who qualified for potential loan forgiveness, said history is being made today.

Crowds of people are outside the US Supreme Court Tuesday ahead of oral arguments in two cases that could decide the fate of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

“It’s a very important day in history for not only me and also my peers,” she told CNN.

Veney, who is also the vice president of her college’s NAACP chapter, is from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but attends school in Maryland. This means she pays a lot more than some other students for out-of-state tuition, something she said will leave her at a disadvantage when she graduates.

Student debt has also prevented students at historically Black colleges and universities specifically from being able to invest or purchase homes, Veney said, expanding the racial wealth gap.

Debt forgiveness would be an “opportunity to create a stronger and a more stable foundation for my family and to create generational wealth afterward,” she said, adding that it would give her more financial security after graduation and help further continue her education.

“If given this opportunity, it would be a blessing, yes, but it is kind of like you pray for the best, but prepare for the worst,” Veney said.

The Supreme Court oral arguments on President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program will kick off soon. First up at the podium before the nine justices will be US solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

She is expected to argue that the administration had the clear legal authority to provide relief to borrowers in order to protect them from the financial harms brought on by the pandemic, such as the inability to buy food or make rent or mortgage payments.

She will stress that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003—known as the HEROES ACT—provides the legal authority for the relief. She will also say that the states do not have the sufficient injury necessary to bring the claim in the first place.

Next up will be Nebraska’s Solicitor General James A. Campbell – representing the six states involved — who will offer several theories to explain why the states will be injured if the plan is allowed to go into effect. Most of his theories revolve around the potential of lost tax revenue. He’s also expected to stress that the plan amounts to an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.

Once Campbell wraps up, Prelogar will likely return to make a few closing arguments. The case is slated to last an hour, but look for it to go at least two hours.

Next comes the second case: With no break, the justices will then tackle the second case initially brought by two student borrowers.

Prelogar will appear again and is expected to say that the students – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor — like the states, don’t have the legal right to bring the case. She is likely to emphasize that the borrowers didn’t qualify for full relief in the first place, so they won’t be injured if the plan goes into effect.

J. Michael Connolly will then step up on behalf of Brown and Taylor. Connolly works for the boutique law firm Consovoy McCarthy, which also represented former President Donald Trump in some of his legal battles. The attorney is likely to repeat what he said in briefs. The HEROES ACT “does not authorize the Secretary to cancel nearly half-a-trillion dollars in debts held by tens of millions of individuals.”

This case may not go as long as the first because so many of the issues are the same. Prelogar will then return to end the marathon session.

What happens next: Under normal circumstances, a case with such high political stakes would likely be resolved in late June or early July. But because the justices expedited the briefing, there is a possibility they may prioritize the opinion and release it before the end of the term.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

Under the plan, approximately 40 million working and middle-class borrowers would receive up to $20,000 in relief, but Republican-led states and conservatives challenged the program shortly after in was announced, saying it’s an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic

Advocates for student loan relief gathered outside the court ahead of the hearing on Monday night and Tuesday. See photos from the scene:

About 26 million people had already applied for President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness program when a federal district court judge struck down the plan in early November. No debt has been canceled thus far.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in two cases related to the program, with a decision expected by late June or early July.

Here’s what to know about Biden’s challenged plan:

Who is eligible? If the courts ultimately allow the program to move forward, not every student loan borrower is eligible for the debt relief. First, only federally held student loans qualify. Private student loans are excluded.

Second, high-income borrowers are generally excluded from receiving debt forgiveness. Individual borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year and married couples or heads of households who make less than $250,000 annually could see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

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.

What about current students? Some current students would be eligible under Biden’s plan if it’s allowed to take effect. Eligibility for borrowers who filed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, as an independent will be based on the individual’s own household income.

What kinds of loans qualify? There are a variety of federal student loans and not all are eligible for relief if the program is allowed to proceed. Federal Direct Loans, including subsidized loans, unsubsidized loans, parent PLUS loans and graduate PLUS loans, are eligible.

But federal student loans that are guaranteed by the government but held by private lenders are not eligible unless the borrower applied to consolidate those loans into a Direct Loan by September 29, 2022.

Will borrowers have to pay taxes on forgiven loans? Borrowers will not have to pay federal income tax on the student loan debt forgiven, thanks to a provision in the American Rescue Plan Act that Congress passed in 2021.

But it’s possible that some borrowers may have to pay state income tax on the amount of debt forgiven. There are a handful of states that may tax discharged debt if state legislative or administrative changes are not made beforehand, according to the Tax Policy Center. The tax liability could be hundreds of dollars, depending on the state.

Find answers to other questions about the program here.

There are some who are surprised that the Biden administration is coming to this conservative court and risking bad precedent.

That’s because several of the justices have made clear in recent years that they believe federal agencies— that are unaccountable to the public —have become too powerful, upsetting the delicate separation of powers.

In 2021, for instance, the court invalidated the Biden administration’s Covid-related eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control holding that such a program needs to be specifically authorized by Congress. 

In 2022, the court blocked a nationwide vaccine or testing mandate for large businesses, sending a clear message that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had overstepped its authority. 

And last term the court cited the so called “major questions doctrine” in a 6-3 decision that curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

Under the theory, if an agency acts in a way that could have major political or economic implications, it must have the authority of Congress. In one of today’s cases, the red states invoke the major questions doctrine — urging the justices to rule against the Biden administration’s student loan plan.

Look for the conservatives on the court to repeatedly press the government on whether it exceeded its authority in pushing through its student loan forgiveness plan. Keep in mind that former President Donald Trump nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in part because they are often skeptical of government power.

The US Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in two cases challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The Biden administration faced several lawsuits over the plan. The plaintiffs argue that the Department of Education is overstepping its authority.

The plan would cancel up to $10,000 for some borrowers, and up to $20,000 to borrowers who received Pell Grants.

Last fall, the Biden administration began notifying people who are approved for federal student loan relief. About 26 million people had already applied to the program by the time it was frozen prompting the government to stop taking applications. No debt has been canceled thus far.

About the cases: One of the lawsuits was brought by six Republican-led states, headed by Nebraska, that argue that the student loan forgiveness program violates the separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs the process by which federal agencies issue regulations.

They argue that it violates the separation of powers and that Biden is using the pandemic as a pretext to mask his true goal of fulfilling a campaign promise to erase student loan debt.

A lower court judge dismissed this lawsuit on October 20, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have the legal standing to bring the challenge. In November, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and blocked the program.

The other challenge that the Supreme Court will hear was brought by two individual borrowers – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor – who are not qualified for full debt relief forgiveness and who say they were denied an opportunity to comment on the secretary of education’s decision to provided targeted student loan debt relief to some.

The lawsuit was filed with the backing of a conservative group called the Job Creators Network Foundation. A federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, striking down the program on November 10.

Lawyers for the government say that Congress gave the secretary of education “expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies,” like the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a memo from the Department of Justice.

It’s been nearly three years since the US government decided to allow borrowers to pause payments on student loans. Since then, the debate on whether to forgive student loans has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear the case later this month.

Whether you paid off a car loan, put down a payment on a new home or made a big purchase that had a significant impact on your life, CNN wants to know if those extra dollars helped you make any financial strides.

We know the issue of student loans disproportionately affects those from low-income backgrounds and minority groups, and we’d like to hear from you.

Click here and share your stories with us, and we may follow up for a CNN story.

President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program is at the mercy of the Supreme Court, and student loan borrowers could be waiting weeks, if not months, to hear whether the program is allowed to go into effect.

But there are several other ways many of the 43 million federal student loan borrowers may qualify for student debt relief. Here’s a look at some other programs:

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows certain government and nonprofit employees to seek federal student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of qualifying payments. A qualifying borrower’s full remaining balance is canceled, regardless of the amount.

Teachers, social workers, some nurses and doctors as well as government lawyers are some of the types of borrowers who may be eligible.

Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program: The Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program cancels up to $17,500 in federal student loan debt for certain full-time teachers who have worked in a qualifying low-income elementary or secondary school for at least five consecutive years.

Math and science teachers who are considered to be highly qualified at the secondary school level, as well as special education teachers at both the elementary and secondary levels, are eligible for the full $17,500 of federal student loan forgiveness. Those who are considered highly qualified and teach other subject areas may receive up to $5,000 in loan forgiveness.

Borrower defense to repayment: The borrower defense to repayment program delivers student debt relief to people who were defrauded by their college.

Generally, students who attended big, for-profit colleges like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech that have been found to have misled students with inflated job-placement numbers will qualify for forgiveness under the federal program.

There are some groups of students that the Department of Education has already determined are automatically eligible for borrower defense to repayment, but other students may have to apply for debt relief, demonstrating how the schools misled them or engaged in other misconduct.

Read about more of the programs here.

If the Supreme Court strikes down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

“The ball goes back to the Biden administration,” said Luke Herrine, an assistant law professor at the University of Alabama who previously worked on a legal strategy for student debt cancellation.

“The administration could implement some other version of this installation under a different legal authority, but that may well generate its own litigation and we end up in the same place,” Herrine added.

The Biden administration is also working on changes to existing federal student loan repayment plans that aim to make it easier for borrowers to pay for college. These changes are not facing legal challenges.

The Department of Education is currently finalizing a new income-driven repayment plan to lower monthly payments as well as the total amount borrowers pay back over time. In contrast to the one-time student loan cancellation program, the new repayment plan could help both current and future borrowers.

Additionally, in July, changes will be made the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which allows certain government and nonprofit employees to seek federal student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of qualifying payments. The changes will make it easier for some borrowers to receive debt forgiveness.

Millions of Americans have student loan debt, amassing to more than $1.6 trillion by the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The Federal Reserve data shows people under the age of 30 are more likely to have student loan debt compared with older adults — underscoring the crippling burden on another generation of Americans.

But the impact is multigenerational. Nearly a quarter of the outstanding student loan debt is owed by Americans who are 50 and older.

Student debt has not always been a crisis. The modern federal education borrowing system came from a series of legislative moves aimed at helping more people have access to college — but it came with some unintended consequences.

Here are some of the key moments:

1958: The first federal initiative 

The National Student Loan program, aimed at expanding access to higher education, was launched in 1958. Created from the National Defense Education Act, it was the first federal student loan initiative for those studying certain subjects to improve science, mathematics and engineering skills during the Cold War.

1965: The Higher Education Act

The Higher Education Act of 1965 opened the possibility of college to even more people, regardless of area of study — but it also created a new type of relationship between the federal government, banks and college campuses through the Guaranteed Student Loan program.

It solved for the government the challenge of how to get lenders involved with such a risky financial investment: The loan did not come from the federal government, but instead, the government assured repayment to bankers willing to give loans, Shermer said.

1970: Sallie Mae and a boom in borrowing and private loans

The Student Loan Marketing Association, known as Sallie Mae, was created through the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 1972. Sallie Mae offered private student loans along with other financial products.

The availability of financial aid products to both for-profit and nonprofit companies allowed for the rise of private student loans, she said.

That coupled with the rising cost of tuition in the 1970s meant that students needed more money to continue their education. Since there was a limit to how much students could borrow in federal loans, private loans were needed as a supplement.

Another reason why private loans became more critical was pressure in Washington for Congress to cut taxes and cut spending, she said.

Keep reading here.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a headline-grabbing case concerning President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program that will affect the finances of millions of Americans.

Critics, including the Republican-led states that have sued, say the initiative amounts to an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student-loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.

But the legal impact could go well beyond the fate of the program.

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the state-led case plus another brought by individual borrowers backed by a conservative group on Tuesday.

While most of the attention so far is focused on whether the Department of Education exceeded its authority in implementing the program, some court watchers are focused on an equally important procedural issue that is a major part of the case: whether the red states behind the challenge have the legal right, or “standing” to bring the dispute in the first place.

The concept of standing is one that requires a party to establish an actual or imminent injury to get into court. Simply disagreeing with a policy is not enough. In recent years, states from one party have felt increasingly emboldened to come to court to sue an administration from a different party over a controversial policy. For the Biden administration, the issue is of critical importance now, especially as Republican-led states feel they have an advantage with the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.

Professor Samuel Bray of Notre Dame Law School said it’s a problem for both Democratic and Republican administrations and he worries about states using the judicial branch to bring federal policymaking to a standstill.

Judges are meant to decide concrete disputes between parties, the thinking goes, and they should not engage in political or policy debates better left to the other branches of government.

Keep reading here.

Ahead of today’s pivotal Supreme Court oral arguments, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told CNN that the administration is assured in its authority to forgive $430 billion of federal student loan debt.

What is the HEROES Act?: In court papers, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 – known as the HEROES Act – provides the government with the authority to offer the relief. Under the law, passed to help active-duty military in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the government says the secretary of education has the authority to act in a national emergency to make sure borrowers are not left worse off with respect to their loans than they were before the emergency.

“We’re working on fixing broken systems, but we feel confident that this plan is legal, based on the fact that it’s off of the pandemic and the economic impact that the pandemic caused,” Cardona said.

The secretary added that the Covid-19 pandemic is a current ongoing crisis, despite Biden saying the pandemic is “over” in an interview on “60 Minutes” in September 2022. The administration plans to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies in May.

But Cardona said the “economic impact of the pandemic is still real,” adding that the majority of the student loan relief is targeted to those making under $75,000.

The fate of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program that would impact scores of borrowers from a wide array of colleges and socioeconomic backgrounds lies in the hands of nine relatively wealthy people who graduated from a short list of elite private schools.

When the Biden administration goes before the Supreme Court Tuesday to defend the program, which would offer up to $20,000 of federal student debt forgiveness to millions of qualified borrowers, it will be making its arguments to a small group of jurists who are far from being representative of the borrowers that could benefit from the relief.

The justices’ salaries alone set them apart from most of the country: Chief Justice John Roberts will make $298,500 in 2023, while each of the associate justices will bring in $274,200 this year for their service. That doesn’t include any revenue from outside sources, like book deals.

The court is also comprised of some of the nation’s brightest legal minds from a small number of prestigious schools, yet another factor that underscores their distance from the borrowers who could benefit from the debt relief assistance. Most of its current members attended one of two Ivy League law schools: Harvard and Yale.

Roberts, along with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan all attended Harvard Law School. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh went to Yale Law School. The only current justice who is not part of the Ivy club is Amy Coney Barrett, who received her law degree from Notre Dame.

Some of the justices had financial assistance to help them attend school: Thomas received a scholarship from Holy Cross College to pay for his undergraduate degree there, while Sotomayor attended Princeton University and Yale Law School on scholarships. And they have come from different backgrounds with different politics. Thomas, for instance, grew up in poverty in Pin Point, Georgia, and is the court’s leading conservative justice.

Keep reading here.

The fate of President Joe Biden’s major student loan forgiveness program lies with the Supreme Court. It could be as late as summer before the justices rule on whether the policy can take effect, leaving borrowers uncertain about the future of their loan payments.

The mired rollout of Biden’s forgiveness program has created confusion for borrowers. Here are some of the big questions still surrounding student loans:

Will Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan take effect? The Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases concerning Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Tuesday, which could deliver up to $20,000 of debt relief for millions of low- and middle-income borrowers.

A decision on whether the program is legal and can move forward is expected by June. Until then, it is on hold and no debt will be discharged under the program. Litigants argue the Biden administration has overstepped its authority, and other recent Supreme Court decisions have ruled against aggressive executive agency actions.

However, lawyers for the Biden administration say that Congress gave the secretary of education “expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies,” like the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a memo from the Department of Justice.

When will the pandemic pause on payments end? For the third consecutive year, federal student loan borrowers started 2023 without having to make payments on their loans thanks to a pandemic-related pause.

Payments were set to resume in January, but the Biden administration extended the pause after its student loan forgiveness program was halted by federal courts. Officials had told borrowers debt relief would be granted before payments restarted.

The payment pause will now last until 60 days after litigation over Biden’s student loan forgiveness program is resolved. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that.

What about the new student loan repayment plan? The Biden administration has proposed big changes to existing income-driven repayment plans, aimed at making payments more manageable for borrowers. It’s unclear when the reforms may take effect.

The changes, which could impact roughly 8 million people currently enrolled in income-driven repayment plans and open up the plans for more borrowers, would reduce monthly debt burdens, as well as the total amount borrowers, pay over the lifetime of their loans.

The Department of Education expects to start implementing some parts of the new income-driven repayment plan later this year but needs to go through a rulemaking process first.

Dive deeper into looming questions here.