The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal Tuesday with the Supreme Court urging the justices to reinstate the president’s latest student loan relief plan.
The appeal asks for a temporary stay on a lower court ruling that currently prevents President Biden from implementing his Savings for a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which would reduce student loan payments for millions of borrowers.
“The rule is a direct 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,” said U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Prelogar. wrote to the judges.
If the Supreme Court is unwilling to intervene in its emergency docket, Prelogar alternatively requested that the justices evaluate the legality of the plan on the merits and expedite consideration so that oral arguments can be held this fall.
The court ordered SAVE Plan challengers to respond by Monday afternoon.
The stance mimics how the Biden administration handled challenges to its previous student debt plan, which would have forgiven at least $10,000 in debt relief to individual borrowers.
Last year, the Supreme Court struck down that plan on a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, after agreeing to address the issue in full once it received a request for emergency action from the Justice Department.
The SAVE plan was first introduced after the Supreme Court ruling.
Its first phase began last fall, increasing income protected payments from 150 percent above federal poverty guidelines to 225 percent and waiving accrued unpaid interest outside of calculated payments.
The second phase was expected to begin in July, reducing loan payments for undergraduate students from 10% of discretionary income to 5% and other loan forgiveness options for certain groups.
The millions of Americans who signed up to the new income-based repayment program had their loans subject to forbearance by the Department of Education until the plan made it through the legal system, leaving borrowers once again in limbo.
The Penn Wharton budget model estimates the SAVE plan would cost $475 billion over 10 years.
It has been subjected to two legal challenges by separate groups of Republican state attorneys general, each saying the high price requires clearer authorization from Congress.
In the first case, seven states – Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma – convinced the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday to issue a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the SAVE Plan until the case is resolved. .
Tuesday’s emergency appeal asks the Supreme Court to overturn the decision as the case moves forward. The Biden administration has urged the justices to deny, however, an emergency appeal filed by challengers in the second suit.
In that case, Alaska, South Carolina and Texas last month urged the Supreme Court to temporarily block key parts of the SAVE Plan. The request has been fully reported since July 19, but ministers have not yet acted on it.
After the 8th Circuit suspended the SAVE Plan on Friday, the three states, in a letter to the justices, wrote that “there is enough overlap to negate the need for emergency relief.”
But they made a bold request: analyze the legality of the plan based on the merits and overturn it immediately, without hearing oral arguments.
Without the Supreme Court’s intervention, the states said, “it is increasingly clear that the federal government will continue to attempt to give away nearly half a billion dollars of public money.”
—Updated at 5:57 p.m.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
