Kansas and other GOP-led states have sued the Biden administration over its plans to cancel student loans.
President Joe Biden has announced $144 billion in student loan forgiveness since his original plan was struck down by the Supreme Court and devised a new plan to lower future payments that could cost taxpayers another $475 billion.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced in February that he planned to file suit but did not provide an exact time frame for when that would happen. His state and 10 others submitted their lawsuit on Thursday in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas.
“Last time defendants tried this the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal,” a portion of the suit said. “Nothing since then has changed, other than introducing more legal errors into this rule’s underlying analysis.”
The suit, which names Biden, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, and the Department of Education as defendants, sets up a second round of legal battles between red states and the Biden administration over student loans.
Biden announced in August 2022 a plan to “forgive” at least $400 billion in student loans in amounts of up to $20,000 per person.
That plan was not approved by Congress, leading Kansas and other states to sue the Department of Education within weeks, arguing it was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed, striking the program down in a 6-3 ruling last June.
Biden wasted little time attempting to work around the ruling, announcing that 804,000 borrowers would have $39 billion of their student debt transferred to the public debt just two weeks later. He’s announced a steady trickle of new rounds since then, totaling roughly $144 billion and affecting 4 million borrowers.
The original plan rested on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities For Students, or HEROES, Act of 2003 for its legal justification, while more recent moves rely on the Higher Education Act of 1965.
But Kansas and the other states, which include Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, say the new plan is just as illegal.
“This lawsuit is now necessary to prevent defendants from continuing to flout the law, which includes ignoring Supreme Court decisions,” the suit said.
An even bigger issue may be the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, Plan, under which monthly student loan payments are as low as $0 for lower-income borrowers and loans can be written off completely after as little as 10 years.
The SAVE Plan was not approved by Congress and, similar to loan forgiveness, has generated controversy because any unpaid debts fall on taxpayers. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that SAVE could cost $475 billion over 10 years.
Biden has been explicit in his defiance of the high court.
“The Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it,” Biden said on Feb. 21 in a speech about SAVE. “But that didn’t stop me. I announced we were going to pursue alternative paths for student debt relief for as many borrowers as possible. And that’s the effort that’s been underway the last two years.”
Advocates for student loan forgiveness say it will remove debt burdens from young people who attended college, allowing them to focus on bigger life goals, such as buying a home or starting a family. Detractors say the plans would result in blue-collar workers who didn’t go to college effectively paying off the loans of white-collar workers who did.
The White House has not commented on the new lawsuit, but a Department of Education spokesperson described it as an attempt by Kansas officials to hurt their own constituents.
“In Kansas, nearly 1,300 borrowers have already received $9.9 million in debt relief under the Biden-Harris administration’s SAVE plan, and 60,000 Kansas borrowers are saving money on their payments month after month because of SAVE,” the spokesperson said. “The Biden-Harris administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
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The lawsuit cites other times when Biden took unilateral action that was struck down in court, including an eviction moratorium the president extended in 2021.
“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,” it said.
