The Biden Administration on Friday petitioned the Supreme Court to lift the hold on the student debt relief plan imposed by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals after a challenge from MAGA states attorneys general who didn’t like educated people catching a break from the government.

“On the merits, the plan falls squarely within the plain text of the Secretary’s statutory authority. Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency – precisely what the Secretary did here. And the plan rested on the Secretary’s examination of the relevant economic data and the Department’s long experience with borrowers transitioning back into repayment. The Eighth Circuit did not address either the text of the statute or the data supporting the plan. And the court compounded its errors by issuing sweeping nationwide relief, rather than limiting the injunction to loans serviced by the sole entity on which the court relied in finding that respondents had standing.”

“The Eighth Circuit’s erroneous injunction leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo, uncertain about the size of their debt and unable to make financial decisions with an accurate understanding of their future repayment obligations. If the Court declines to vacate the injunction, it may wish to construe this application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, grant the petition, and set the case for expedited briefing and argument this Term to avoid prolonging this uncertainty for the millions of affected borrowers. Cf. United States v. Texas, cert. granted, No. 22-58 (oral argument scheduled for Nov. 29, 2022),” says the petition.