Court Shuts Biden Down

(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – President Joe Biden’s plan for forgiving student loan debt has been stopped temporarily by a court order over a lawsuit by six states.

St.Louis, Missouri-based US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ordered the Biden administration to abstain from any action on its student debt relief program.

The order is pending a decision on an injunction against Biden’s debt cancelation program filed by Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina, The National Review reported.

“Appellants’ emergency motion for an administrative stay prohibiting the appellees from discharging any student loan debt under the Cancellation program until this Court rules on the appellants’ motion for an injunction pending appeal is granted,” said the Eighth Circuit’s temporary order.

At first, the six states’ lawsuit against the student debt relief policy was rejected on Thursday in a 19-page ruling by US District Judge Henry Autrey, an appointee of President George W. Bush, in St. Louis.

However, the Eighth Circuit’s order negated Autrey’s ruling after the plaintiff states requested the appellate court to “freeze matters in place.”

The freeze on Biden’s student debt initiative will remain in force until the Eighth Circuit considers the state’s appeal in full and decides whether their request to block the program is lawful, a process that could take several months.

“The states will have to show, first and foremost, that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the appeal,” the report said.

“The injunction litigation is thus crucial; it is highly unlikely that the Circuit would ultimately sustain the Biden program on the merits if it has first found that the states are likely to prevail,” it elaborated.

The plaintiff states are believed to have a “strong chance” of convincing the appeals court that Judge Autrey had no right to dismiss the lawsuit based on the argument that the six states had no standing on the issue of student debt relief.

Thus, for instance, in the case of Missouri, the judge declared it lacked standing to sue on behalf of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, the agency affected by Biden’s program, because the state didn’t have enough control over the body.

However, a commentary by George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin pointed out that the body in question is “clearly a state agency.”

“The states have a strong chance of persuading the Circuit that Judge Autrey was wrong regarding the standing issue,” Somin wrote.

“Consequently, expect the Eighth Circuit to reverse Judge Autrey’s ruling,” he added in his post at Volokh.

The Eighth Circuit’s order thus raised expectations Biden’s student debt relief program would be blocked altogether, meaning its fate could ultimately come into the hands of the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court.

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