The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia joins 6 GOP-led states in lawsuit over debt relief plan
Biden administration says effort would help over 30M borrowers.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has signed onto a lawsuit with six other states in an attempt to stop another federal effort to provide student loan debt relief to millions of borrowers nationwide.
The lawsuit by Republican-led states seeks to block a second attempt by President Joe Biden to wipe out debts for lower-income borrowers who have fallen behind on repayments and reduce debt for others.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision with conservative justices in the majority, ruled against the first effort last year. The latest lawsuit is similar to one filed last month by 11 states and follows the one that led to the high court’s ruling in Biden v. Nebraska.
“Despite the Court having already settled this issue, the Biden administration continues to brazenly violate the law,” Carr said in a statement Wednesday, adding that “it’s wrong to be forced to pay off other people’s student loans, particularly those with the highest earning potential.”
The Biden administration says it is seeking relief for struggling former students, including those who attended “low-financial-value” college programs and those who never graduated. It says it is trying to address racial equity, and a legacy of wealth disparity exacerbated by the interest on loans. It said that a typical Black student who started college in the mid-1990s still owed 95% of their original debt two decades later and that Hispanic borrowers are more likely to default than their white counterparts.
The administration on Monday announced several new relief plans that, in conjunction with the preexisting Saving on a Valuable Education program, or SAVE, would help more than 30 million borrowers.
The SAVE program is being targeted by Carr, a Republican, and his GOP counterparts in Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.
“The President’s ‘Plan B’ attempt to force taxpayers to pay for the debts of others is no stronger than his ‘Plan A’ attempt that was blocked last year,” says their lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. It added that Biden’s latest expansion, or “Plan C,” is aimed at “canceling waves of student debt in the run-up to the November election.”
Some see Biden’s plan as an effort to galvanize support among young voters.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is touting the impact, saying 4 million borrowers have already been approved for debt relief. A state-by-state comparison released by the U.S. Department of Education on Monday tallied borrowers who are “seeing significant relief,” to the tune of $6.4 billion for more than 109,000 in Georgia alone.