Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied a request Thursday by a Wisconsin taxpayer’s group to block President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation policy.
Barrett, who holds jurisdiction over the Wisconsin courts, rejected an emergency request filed Wednesday by the Brown County Taxpayers Association requesting that the justice temporarily block the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program. The program aims to forgive the debts of individuals making less than $125,000 per year and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
The justice declined to bring the matter to the full court and did not provide an explanation, NBC News reported.
JUST IN: Amy Coney Barrett has swiftly denied a Wisconsin group’s bid to block Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan. Barrett (who handles emergency requests from Wisconsin) acted on her own, without referring the case to the full court or seeking a response from the government. https://t.co/utBzg4AhAp
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) October 20, 2022
The filing argues that the forgiveness program would cost more than $1 trillion and bypass Congress. The document further states that the program is an abuse of the executive branch’s authority in regards to government spending.
“There is no legal justification for this presidential usurpation of the constitutional spending power, which is reserved exclusively for Congress,” the filing read.
The major opposition to the student loan forgiveness program has led to several legal challenges. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) sued the Department of Education in late September in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana with the argument that Biden does not have the legal authority to forgive approximately $400 billion in debt.
Six Republican states filed a lawsuit against the administration for allegedly overstepping its executive powers.