A group of 11 states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, filed a federal lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s new plan to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in college loan debt. (The Kansas City Star, Tim Carpenter)
This is TOPEKA. Thursday, Kris Kobach, the attorney general of Kansas, and the attorneys general of 10 other states filed a federal case against President Joe Biden and the U.S. Department of Education. The lawsuit challenges an effort to lower the burden of college debt by lowering monthly loan payments to almost nothing.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case involving a different Biden student-debt order that the president did not have the power to cancel college students’ debts on his or her own. The country’s highest court said that such a move needed to be approved by Congress.
As he ran for office two years ago, Kobach promised to sue Biden many times. “Once again, the Biden administration has decided to steal from the poor and give to the rich,” he said. “He is making people who didn’t go to college or who worked their way through it pay for the loans of people who took out huge amounts of debt.” “This group of Republican attorneys general will step in and stop Biden.”
Attorney General Andrew Bailey of Missouri, who is also a Republican, said he planned to join Arkansas in a different lawsuit over student loans.
Biden said on social media that he would keep working to make sure that “higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a glass ceiling.” I’m not going to give up.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling last summer stopped Biden’s plan to completely cancel about $430 billion in federal loan debt. This was because the policy hadn’t been approved by the legislative branch and would have cost taxpayers money. In the first case, Kansas was one of six states that sued Biden.
“Despite that loss, and in a very brazen way, the president went ahead and put in place a different version of the student loan forgiveness program,” Kobach said at a Capitol news conference. “This is the first time since the Civil War that a sitting president has tried to go against the Supreme Court in this way.”
Kobach said that the new lawsuit from 11 states brought in Wichita said the executive branch didn’t have the power to change how student loans are paid back, which would get rid of at least $156 billion in debt. The attorney general of Kansas said Biden broke the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine,” which said that Congress should be able to give important policy choices to a federal agency.
“We can’t wait to see the president’s lawyers in court,” Kobach said. Biden can’t do what he wants to do because it’s against the law. It seems like Biden is trying to use his power like a king instead of a president in a constitutional republic.
Other states’ attorneys general joined the suit against Kansas. They are Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah. They are going to ask the U.S. District Court for a temporary order against Biden. In the court document, the attorneys general said Biden broke the split of powers, the education department went beyond what the law allowed, and the agency behaved arbitrarily and capriciously.
Kobach was asked if he thought Biden was trying to keep the student loan plan going to win over young votes in an election year.
The lawyer general said, “I think that’s a possibility.” “It could just be a coincidence, but the first student loan plan happened during that election cycle in 2022. Similarly, it could just be a coincidence that the president is praising and talking about this student loan plan during the 2024 election cycle.”