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A Texas Judge Blocks Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program

A Texas Judge Blocks Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program

A federal judge in Texas has struck down President Joe Biden’s popular student loan forgiveness program, declaring it illegal.

The lawsuit was filed in October by a conservative group, the Job Creators Network Foundation, representing two borrowers who didn’t qualify for debt relief. The program was already on hold due a separate legal challenge.

The Biden administration has argued that Congress has given the secretary of education the power to broadly discharge student loan debt in a 2003 law known as the HEROES Act. But the Texas federal judge said the law does not provide the executive branch congressional authorization to create the student loan forgiveness program.

“The program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” wrote Judge Mark Pittman. “In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.”

The Justice Department said Thursday it would appeal the decision.

“For the 26 million borrowers who have already given the Department of Education the necessary information to be considered for debt relief – 16 million of whom have already been approved for relief – the Department will hold onto their information so it can quickly process their relief once we prevail in court,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

The Biden administration has been banned from canceling any debt since the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals put an administrative hold on the program on October 21.

Under Biden’s program, individual borrowers who earned less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 annually in those years are eligible to have 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.

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