Today, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes is asking the United States Supreme Court to stop a student debt forgiveness plan drafted by the Department of Education, saying that the plan is a massive example of federal overreach that blatantly violates the separation of powers doctrine.
A lower court allowed Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to proceed with the debt forgiveness plan. The filing asks the Supreme Court to stay that decision.
Cardona’s plan is to settle class action lawsuits rather than implement student loan forgiveness through traditional lines of authority. The filing argues that Congress can forgive billions of dollars of student loan debt. The Secretary of Education does not have that authority.
After the President failed to achieve the cancellation of student loan debt by executive action, the Secretary of Education created a new plan for erasing billions of dollars of loans for three groups of borrowers:
- Borrowers who accrued debt by attending 151 schools will have their debt forgiven automatically and will also receive a refund of the amounts they already repaid.
- A second group of approximately 68,000 borrowers may seek a review of their federally held debt.
- A third group of approximately 206,000 borrowers from 4,000 schools may seek forgiveness through yet another process.
The filing supports an appeal in the Everglades College v. Miguel Cardona, Secretary of Education case. The U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California previously ruled that the Department of Education could advance with the debt-forgiveness plan.
Attorney General Reyes is joined in the amicus brief were the attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Read a copy of the brief here.
