Gov. Reynolds Joins Five States in Lawsuit Challenging Biden’s Authority to Cancel Student Loan Debt

Governor Kim Reynolds and five other states filed a challenge to the Biden Administration’s mass debt cancellation in federal court in Missouri. Today’s challenge asks the Court for an immediate temporary restraining order to pause the program because the Biden Administration has indicated it will start canceling loan balances as early as next week.
“A significant majority of Americans have already paid off their student loans or chose not to pursue a higher education degree at all,” said Gov. Reynolds. “By forcing them to pay for other people’s loans – regardless of income – President Biden’s mass debt cancellation punishes these Americans and belittles the path they chose. This expensive, unlawful plan is an insult to working people and must be stopped.”

Determined to pursue across-the-board debt cancellation and stymied by repeated failures to achieve that goal through legislation, the Biden Administration has resorted to the now-concluded COVID-19 pandemic and a federal law that applies in the context of military operations or national emergencies as its justification for taking this dramatic action. No statute permits President Biden to unilaterally relieve millions of individuals from their obligation to pay loans they voluntarily assumed.

This burden of economic loss will do little to benefit the working class and the poor. It is fundamentally unfair for those who can least afford it to provide through their tax dollars relief to the well-off who can afford to pay their own loans.

States joining in the filing include Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina.