Supreme Court to Hear Student Loan Forgiveness Debates
The court will hear statements for and against President Biden’s loan forgiveness plan.
This Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments both for and against President Joe Biden’s proposed plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt. Since Biden revealed the plan last August, it has been met with fierce political and legal blowback, mostly from conservative lawmakers who have argued that the plan is unfeasible and constitutes no more than a “hand-out” for the fiscally irresponsible.
Liberal lawmakers have countered that large swaths of young America are saddled with impossibly-large debts that are preventing them from making consistent contributions to society, not to mention the toll that kind of debt takes on a person’s mental and physical wellbeing.
“The court must see these lawsuits as the partisan sham they really are and protect the Biden administration’s historic relief plan,” said Ben Kaufman, director of research and investigations at the Student Borrower Protection Center. “Borrowers deserve better than to be treated like political pawns — lives and livelihoods are at stake.”
Legal and political analysts believe that the proposal has a high chance of being struck down by the Court’s conservative justices, who have previously been staunchly opposed to many of Biden’s proposals. However, some have posited that the Justices may not take this approach immediately, as striking down such a popular proposal would bode poorly for the Court’s already sagging reputation.
Biden's student loan forgiveness plan goes before Supreme Court Tuesday. What borrowers need to know https://t.co/RRL3iE0rHg
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) February 27, 2023
“Striking down forgiveness will add to growing skepticism that the conservative justices vote for conservatives, and the liberal justices vote for liberals,” Dan Urman, a law professor at Northeastern University, told CNBC.