A group of states has filed a lawsuit to block President Joe Biden’s latest proposal, which aims to shift repayment of student loans from former students to taxpayers.
According to Fox Business, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, leading the lawsuit, argues that this year’s proposal to forgive student debt violates many of the similar principles as Biden’s initial attempt, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected last year.
“Not since the Civil War has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway,’” Kobach said during a Fox News interview. “Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan.”
The lawsuit led by Kansas has garnered support from several states including Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has announced that his state is also at the forefront of a coalition opposing the loan forgiveness plan. This coalition, which will include Arkansas among other states, denounces the proposal as Biden’s “latest illegal student loan plan,” as stated in a post on X.
“The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: President Biden cannot unilaterally cancel student debt and force taxpayers to bear the multi-billion-dollar cost,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin stated.
According to the Daily Mail, Kobach stated that former students will have the “entirety of their debt canceled” in a debt relief plan he said was “twisting the words of federal law.”
“This time they say, ‘Oh we’re just modifying the terms of debt repayment,’ but that’s not modifying the terms of debt repayment when you take the debt all the way down to zero and you don’t have to pay back the principal,” he said.
Kobach asserted that the plan is heavily influenced by political motivations.
“It may just be coincidence, or it may be that the administration is attempting to curry favor with people who have student debt,” he said.
According to Fox Business, Biden introduced his $138 billion student loan plan in February, saying of his student debt forgiveness efforts: “The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me.”
The lawsuit is based on the argument that a significant policy change like this requires approval from Congress.
“Last time Defendants tried this the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal. Nothing since then has changed,” a copy of the lawsuit posted on Fox Business said.
“This lawsuit is now necessary to prevent Defendants from continuing to flout the law, which includes ignoring Supreme Court decisions,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claimed that ruling outside the law is a trademark of Biden’s administration.
“This is not the first time Defendant Biden has taken actions that he publicly admits are likely unlawful. This is an administration that rules by will, not by law,” according to the lawsuit.
“Although this round of unilateral debt nullification takes on a new name, with a different putative authority, it is every bit as improper as his first unlawful attempt at debt forgiveness in Biden v. Nebraska,” the lawsuit said, referring to the 2023 case decided by the Supreme Court.
“Indeed, as the Defendants scrape ever deeper into the barrel for legal pretexts to abolish student debts, the illegality of those artifices becomes more obvious. The authority that Defendants claim now lacks any substantive limits and amounts to claiming that they can abolish all student debt at any time by rulemaking alone,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit pointed out that the plan has political motivations:
“The timing of these actions also makes plain their pretextual nature. The first round of debt relief was rushed out in time for the 2022 elections in a transparent bread-and-circuses attempt to boost base turnout and, in essence, buy votes with federal funds. This second round of debt cancellation also — by remarkable coincidence — manages to take effect shortly before the 2024 election.”
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