(Bloomberg) — The legal battle over President Joe Biden’s plan for student debt relief could be headed to the US Supreme Court as the government seeks to lift a lower court order that blocked the program indefinitely.
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The Biden administration, which has been fighting multiple challenges to the program, said Thursday in a Texas court filing that it planned to ask the high court to reverse a Monday order in a separate case from a federal appeals court in St. Louis involving a lawsuit brought by six Republican-led states.
Implementation of the plan, which would distribute as much as $20,000 to qualified borrowers, has been on hold since Oct. 21, when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay. Last week, in a separate case brought by two borrowers, a federal judge in Texas struck down the plan as unlawful.
About 26 million people had requested student-debt forgiveness before the US Department of Education stopped accepting applications. Only borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for households, can qualify.
In the Texas case, the US government already has asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the decision by the lower court judge who ruled in favor of Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative advocacy group that sued on behalf of two Texans who claim that their education debt was unfairly excluded from the program.
According to the filing Thursday, if its appeal of the Texas ruling isn’t successful, the Biden administration will take the case to the Supreme Court along with its appeal of the case brought by the GOP-led states.
Challenges to the plan have yet to land before the Supreme Court, but Justice Amy Coney Barrett has twice refused requests to block the plan from plaintiffs in other lawsuits.
The case is Brown v. US Department of Education, 22-11115, US Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit
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