I’m commenting to follow this. I’m curious what was illegal about it besides Biden not using Congress as the pathway to getting what he wanted (granted, with a GOP controlled Congress, he didn’t have the votes).
pierre_x10 on
IOIYAR – It’s Okay If You’re A Republican
INOIYAD – It’s Not Okay If You’re A Democrat
ROJJ86 on
Using the neg reg process to forgive $25k per borrower when Congress had not expressly approved it.
horsebycommittee on
Read the court of appeals’ opinion in *State of Missouri v. Trump*, No. 24-2351 (8th Cir. 2025):
Very simply, because the courts decided it was.
They decided Biden & the Dept of Ed didn’t have the power to create the plan.
JuicyWarpDrive on
Because not-Trump created it
Important_Charity862 on
The low payments and shortened repayment period meant that many borrowers wouldn’t repay their loans in full. That is equivalent to loan forgiveness which can only be authorized by Congress.
ste1071d on
Rulemaking has been under scrutiny for some time (see Loper overturning Chevron). When you look at the elements of all of these non-Congressionally created plans they are dubious, especially interest subsidies and forgiveness terms.
heyitsmemaya on
Okay. Simple terms.
Congress passes laws, right? Well, yes and no.
Actually, federal government agencies often need to take those laws and apply them in real life. In so doing, agencies often end up interpreting what Congress intended or inadvertently creating new 🆕 “laws”.
SAVE was illegal because it was a sort of quasi agency law not something specifically passed by Congress.
Saying more would involve politics but you should Wikipedia the attack on “Chevron deference” and federal government interpretation and application of Congressional intent.
shermanstorch on
It wasn’t. By the plain text of the Higher Education Act, Congress gave the ED Secretary the power to implement regulations like SAVE.
Republican attorney generals forum shopped until they found a court that would ignore the plain text of the law and traditional standing requirements (like being able to show concrete injury) to find that the plaintiffs could *probably* show that SAVE was an unconstitutional exercise of the executive branch’s rulemaking authority and issue a preliminary injunction halting its implementation. Once Trump took office, his administration stopped defending SAVE in court and effectively agreed to all of the plaintiff’s demands.
oddpiecedesigns on
It’s Compassion
Serpentongue on
The state of Missouri, on behalf of the company Mohela, claimed reducing payments took money out of their states pockets by reducing or waiving interest payments which violated their states right to your money.
Square_Struggle_3935 on
it was too generous. That is all.
U_SHLD_THINK_BOUT_IT on
I don’t really know how you can expect to have this conversation without it coming down to politics. If it weren’t political, no one would have a problem with increasing the accessibility of higher education.
The reality is that the GOP saw polling data at one point that indicated it would be politically advantageous for them to oppose accessibility of post-secondary education. That’s it.
And the DNC aren’t innocent in all this. Ever since Citizens United, they’ve been the party of “we can’t stop them, we need to be BIPARTISAN.” It should be clear to everyone that the DNC exists only to enable the GOP and to filter out anything even remotely left of moderate from gaining traction as opposition to the right.
All we can do at this point is use our extremely expensive educations to rip this corruption out by the root and shoot it into the sun.
Silly_Somewhere1791 on
Probably not strictly ILLEGAL but it was a workaround to achieve loan forgiveness, something the Biden administration had been repeatedly told it couldn’t implement.
On a secondary level, now that I’m seeing how many high-earning lawyers and doctors are now upset at having to pay their loans in full, I think that the plan was probably not benefiting the intended demographics. I’m sorry, but a lawyer making six figures can pay their own loans. Lots of them admitted to only taking out the loans with the plan to have them forgiven under this scheme, which wasn’t the intention.
Alternate_Cost on
“The power Congress gave the Secretary in 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(d)(1) to create repayment plans means the Secretary must design ICR plans leading to actual repayment of the loans. The Secretary has gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.”.
Only Congress can approve student loan forgiveness. If it was just a more generous plan for low income earners with no forgiveness attached it’d be fine. But the plans they make legally need to lead to repayment, not forgiveness.
tl;dr they got too greedy. If they just did a low payment low interest if making payments program, it would’ve stuck.
-dakpluto- on
Because the courts ruled that the Department of Education and the Biden Administration violated the previous striking down of their debt forgiveness under the HEROES act, saying the actions then violated the powers granted by the act.
As much as I want student loan forgiveness and believe in it I can’t say I 100% disagree with the courts here. For me the power of the purse is assigned directly to Congress by the Constitution and I have to agree that I think this is something Congress has to do. I don’t think any President, regardless of the party they belong to, ultimately should have the power to do a sweeping forgiveness like this. Not a power I really want a President to have because to me that is something that could very easily be abused in other areas.
Professional_Day6200 on
The reasoning was that it was created by the Dept of Ed and not established by Congress.
18 Comments
I’m commenting to follow this. I’m curious what was illegal about it besides Biden not using Congress as the pathway to getting what he wanted (granted, with a GOP controlled Congress, he didn’t have the votes).
IOIYAR – It’s Okay If You’re A Republican
INOIYAD – It’s Not Okay If You’re A Democrat
Using the neg reg process to forgive $25k per borrower when Congress had not expressly approved it.
Read the court of appeals’ opinion in *State of Missouri v. Trump*, No. 24-2351 (8th Cir. 2025):
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca8/24-2351/24-2351-2025-02-18.html
Very simply, because the courts decided it was.
They decided Biden & the Dept of Ed didn’t have the power to create the plan.
Because not-Trump created it
The low payments and shortened repayment period meant that many borrowers wouldn’t repay their loans in full. That is equivalent to loan forgiveness which can only be authorized by Congress.
Rulemaking has been under scrutiny for some time (see Loper overturning Chevron). When you look at the elements of all of these non-Congressionally created plans they are dubious, especially interest subsidies and forgiveness terms.
Okay. Simple terms.
Congress passes laws, right? Well, yes and no.
Actually, federal government agencies often need to take those laws and apply them in real life. In so doing, agencies often end up interpreting what Congress intended or inadvertently creating new 🆕 “laws”.
SAVE was illegal because it was a sort of quasi agency law not something specifically passed by Congress.
Saying more would involve politics but you should Wikipedia the attack on “Chevron deference” and federal government interpretation and application of Congressional intent.
It wasn’t. By the plain text of the Higher Education Act, Congress gave the ED Secretary the power to implement regulations like SAVE.
Republican attorney generals forum shopped until they found a court that would ignore the plain text of the law and traditional standing requirements (like being able to show concrete injury) to find that the plaintiffs could *probably* show that SAVE was an unconstitutional exercise of the executive branch’s rulemaking authority and issue a preliminary injunction halting its implementation. Once Trump took office, his administration stopped defending SAVE in court and effectively agreed to all of the plaintiff’s demands.
It’s Compassion
The state of Missouri, on behalf of the company Mohela, claimed reducing payments took money out of their states pockets by reducing or waiving interest payments which violated their states right to your money.
it was too generous. That is all.
I don’t really know how you can expect to have this conversation without it coming down to politics. If it weren’t political, no one would have a problem with increasing the accessibility of higher education.
The reality is that the GOP saw polling data at one point that indicated it would be politically advantageous for them to oppose accessibility of post-secondary education. That’s it.
And the DNC aren’t innocent in all this. Ever since Citizens United, they’ve been the party of “we can’t stop them, we need to be BIPARTISAN.” It should be clear to everyone that the DNC exists only to enable the GOP and to filter out anything even remotely left of moderate from gaining traction as opposition to the right.
All we can do at this point is use our extremely expensive educations to rip this corruption out by the root and shoot it into the sun.
Probably not strictly ILLEGAL but it was a workaround to achieve loan forgiveness, something the Biden administration had been repeatedly told it couldn’t implement.
On a secondary level, now that I’m seeing how many high-earning lawyers and doctors are now upset at having to pay their loans in full, I think that the plan was probably not benefiting the intended demographics. I’m sorry, but a lawyer making six figures can pay their own loans. Lots of them admitted to only taking out the loans with the plan to have them forgiven under this scheme, which wasn’t the intention.
“The power Congress gave the Secretary in 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(d)(1) to create repayment plans means the Secretary must design ICR plans leading to actual repayment of the loans. The Secretary has gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.”.
Only Congress can approve student loan forgiveness. If it was just a more generous plan for low income earners with no forgiveness attached it’d be fine. But the plans they make legally need to lead to repayment, not forgiveness.
tl;dr they got too greedy. If they just did a low payment low interest if making payments program, it would’ve stuck.
Because the courts ruled that the Department of Education and the Biden Administration violated the previous striking down of their debt forgiveness under the HEROES act, saying the actions then violated the powers granted by the act.
As much as I want student loan forgiveness and believe in it I can’t say I 100% disagree with the courts here. For me the power of the purse is assigned directly to Congress by the Constitution and I have to agree that I think this is something Congress has to do. I don’t think any President, regardless of the party they belong to, ultimately should have the power to do a sweeping forgiveness like this. Not a power I really want a President to have because to me that is something that could very easily be abused in other areas.
The reasoning was that it was created by the Dept of Ed and not established by Congress.