Biden’s SAVE student loan repayment plan faces fresh legal challenges from Republican-led states

Two groups of Republican-led states have sued President Joe Biden over the student loan repayment plan he launched last year, arguing he’s once again overstepping his authority to cancel student debt.

Two groups of Republican-led states have sued President Joe Biden over the student loan repayment plan he launched last year, arguing he’s once again overstepping his authority to cancel student debt. Some of the states, including Missouri, are among the same plaintiffs that sued the Biden administration over its sweeping student loan forgiveness program, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year. Eighteen Republican-led states have joined one of two lawsuits challenging the repayment plan known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). The plan lowers monthly payments and offers a shorter pathway to loan forgiveness for many low-income borrowers. SAVE is separate from Biden’s latest student loan forgiveness proposals, unveiled Monday, which would automatically cancel student debt for millions of borrowers if enacted. But the new legal challenges suggest it’s likely some of these same states will challenge the new rules, which the Biden administration is attempting to implement ahead of the November election. “Yet again, the President is unilaterally trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress,” reads the lawsuit filed Tuesday by attorneys general in Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma. “This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent,” the lawsuit says.