Student loan debt in the United States currently totals approximately $1.76 trillion. An average U.S. household with student debt owes $58,238—one of the highest averages for student loan debt globally. 

From difficulty in purchasing a home to being forced to work multiple jobs, the consequences of student debt are innumerable. The Biden Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan was meant to address this. 

The Student Debt Relief Plan has three parts. First, it would extend the student loan repayment pause until 60 days after the Supreme Court decides this case. Second, the Department of Education would provide up to $20,000 in debt relief to Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 in debt relief to non-Pell Grant recipients. Third, the Biden Administration would make the student loan system “more manageable for current and future borrowers.” This would occur through a series of changes, one being forgiving loan balances after 10 years instead of the current 20.

Six states—Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina—sued the Biden Administration for the plan. The lower court dismissed the case for “lack of standing,” but the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a nationwide injunction, halting the program. 

In federal court, in order to sue, the plaintiffs must show that they have a sufficient connection to and have been directly injured by the policy in question, a term also known as standing. The standing threshold must be cleared before the court can consider the arguments of the case itself. 

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Missouri specifically had standing because of the harm that loan servicer Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) would face. MOHELA was created by a Missouri statute, and thus, the court found that MOHELA’s contributions to the state treasury would be impacted by the loan forgiveness program– approximately half of the direct loans taken from MOHELA would fall under Biden’s student debt relief plan’s eligibility criteria. 

Instead, the Biden Administration argued that MOHELA and Missouri are separate entities; the state should not be able to claim harm on behalf of MOHELA, a company who isn’t even involved with the lawsuit.

In fact, all the loan servicers hired by the Education Department had decided against suing the Student Debt relief Plan. Yet, according to Politico, “MOHELA presented a different situation…because of the company’s relationship to a state with a Republican attorney general.”

Numerous legal experts, both conservative and liberal, have agreed that there is a lack of standing in this case. 

But at the end of the day, although the Supreme Court will have to justify the standing in this case, they’re likely to ultimately rule in favor of Missouri. The conservative majority will likely argue that the student loan forgiveness program exceeds the Secretary of Education’s authority. 

The plaintiffs argue that the plan is not “sufficiently connected” to the COVID-19 national emergency, on which the plan was economically justified. They further state that “the Act’s text demonstrates that its purpose is to keep certain borrowers from falling into a worse position financially…yet the Secretary uses it here to place tens of millions of borrowers in a better position.” 

Inherently, the plaintiffs have admitted to knowing the benefits of the student loan debt forgiveness program—but it may harm the state financially, so they’ll oppose it nonetheless.

The ruling is expected to come out around June this year, but for now, we can only hope that student debt relief prevails.