The announcement is the latest in a series of loan forgiveness actions by the administration after the Supreme Court last year struck down Biden’s much broader plan.
In a new wave of student loan forgiveness, the Biden administration is canceling $5 billion in debt for 74,000 borrowers, many of whom worked in public sector jobs for more than a decade.
President Joe Biden said that 44,000 of Friday’s approved borrowers were having their education debt wiped clean after 10 years of public service, and that those borrowers included teachers, nurses and firefighters. Nearly 30,000 borrowers have worked toward repayment for at least 20 years but “never got the relief they earned through income-driven repayment plans,” Biden said in a statement.
It’s the latest round of loan forgiveness efforts after the Supreme Court struck down the White House’s student loan debt relief plan last year. Since the ruling, the White House has launched a series of smaller relief programs.
The case before the Supreme Court was based on the exclusion of some borrowers. The first action was to forgive $5-10k for low- and middle-income borrowers. The people who sued were well-off enough that they weren’t included. If his first move had been to cancel all student debt guaranteed by the federal government, the plaintiffs would have lacked standing to sue and the case would likely not have gone to the Supreme Court. If it had it would have been a much weaker case because there would be no group of borrowers who were excluded.
