Oct. 4 (UPI) — A federal judge in Missouri has again blocked President Joe Biden’s sweeping student debt relief plan, just a day after a judge in Georgia allowed for it to proceed.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, issued an injunction Thursday against Biden’s Plan B student debt relief plan.
Biden has twice previously tried to mass cancel student debt held by tens of millions of borrowers, both of which were challenged in courts by Republicans who were granted injunctions.
Under Biden’s third plan, which was unveiled in April and has yet to be finalized, tens of millions of Americans would be granted student debt relief. However, seven GOP-led states filed a challenge against it in federal court in September, arguing that the Biden administration was attempting to secretly mass cancel student debt, harming their taxpayers and state purses.
The Republican-led states were granted a temporary injunction by the Southern District of Georgia days later.
On Wednesday, the day the temporary injunction was to expire, U.S. District Judge Randal Hall in Georgia ruled his state did not have standing in the case, sending the matter back to Missouri, where Schelp ruled Thursday that the initial court was correct in blocking the plan.
“This court agrees fully with the Southern District’s conclusions in the original temporary restraining order and will extend restraining order into a preliminary injunction,” Schelp wrote in his three-page ruling, stating that “irreparable harm to the Plaintiffs will occur if Defendants wrongfully and unlawfully eliminate the debt at issue.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is leading the lawsuit, called the Thursday ruling “a huge victory for every working American who won’t have to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt.”
“I paid for my education in blood, sweat, and tears in service to my country, so this fight is personal for me. We will continue to lead the way for working Americans who are being preyed upon by unelected federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.,” Bailey said in a statement.
BREAKING: Another court just granted our motion to BLOCK @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris’ clandestine student loan scheme that they tried to get done over a WEEKEND before anyone could find out.— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) October 3, 2024
The Student Borrower Protection Center criticized Schelp’s ruling as “radical” on Thursday, stating it lacked any legal reasoning or justification.
“With a dearth of legal reasoning, today’s decision takes the extraordinary step of blocking a proposed federal student debt relief rule that has yet to be finalized and has never been implemented,” SBPC Deputy Executive Director and Managing Counsel Persis Yu said in a statement.
“With this case, the Missouri Attorney General continues to put naked political interest and corporate greed ahead of student loan borrowers in Missouri and across the country.”
Yu described the case as lacking “seriousness” and called it an attack on not only millions of student loan borrowers by the judicial system as a whole.
“We will not stop fighting to expose these abuses and ensure borrowers get the relief they deserve,” Yu said.
