Court temporarily blocks Biden's student loan forgiveness program
designer491
A Federal appeals court on Friday issued a stay that temporarily blocks the Biden administration's plan to forgive billions of dollars in federal student loans.
The stay is in effect while the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals considers a motion from six Republican-led states to block the loan forgiveness program.
The Biden administration has until Monday, 5:00 PM CDT to respond and a deadline of Tuesday, 5:00 PM CDT for any reply from the appellants, the Associate Press resported.
On Thursday a U.S. District Judge in St. Louis ruled that the states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina didn't establish standing in the case. As such, "the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case," Judge Henry Autrey said in the ruling.
The stay comes a week after borrowers started applying for the forgiveness program. Earlier Friday, Biden said almost 22M people have already applied for federal student loan relief.
Student loan-related stocks include SLM Corp. (NASDAQ:SLM), Navient (NASDAQ:NAVI), SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ:SOFI) and Nelnet (NYSE:NNI).
In August, Biden announced the plan to forgive $10K of student debt for borrowers who earn less than $125K per year, with Pell Grant recipients eligible for up to $20K of loans forgiven.
Dear readers: We recognize that politics often intersects with the financial news of the day, so we invite you to click here to join the separate political discussion.