Biden's student loan forgiveness plan may go into effect after judge lets temporary order expire

President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program can continue after a judge on Wednesday allowed a temporary restraining order on the plan to expire.

It's a small victory for the Biden administration just weeks before the presidential election. The lawsuit was filed in September by seven Republican-led states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio — against Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

U.S. District Judge Randall Hall wrote in his order filed in the Southern District of Georgia that Georgia had no standing to challenge the plan “because it failed to demonstrate specific, specific, actual or threatened harm.”

“Without standing, the court finds it appropriate to dismiss Georgia as a party to the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and defers to defendants’ arguments regarding venue,” he wrote.

The judge also wrote that the court agreed with the federal government's argument that the venue was inappropriate.

“Without standing, Georgia cannot provide proper venue for the action because a plaintiff who lacks standing cannot create venue where it would not otherwise exist,” he wrote.

The judge said the “equitable outcome” would be to move the case to a district “where venue is appropriate.” He wrote that he would transfer the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

The states that filed the lawsuit have argued that the government's rule, which would cancel student debt en masse, would have a detrimental impact on income tax revenue.

Last month, Hall extended an injunction on the plan for another 14 days.

This comes ahead of the Biden administration's release of the plan's final rule this month, which could forgive student debt for more than 25 million borrowers.

Biden unveiled the revised plan in April after the Supreme Court struck down the government's original student debt relief program in 2023. This plan would have benefited 43 million borrowers by forgiving up to $20,000 in debt, potentially costing more than $400 billion.

States sued the administration last month after it announced over the summer that it would begin contacting all borrowers with at least one outstanding federally held student loan about their relief options. If the administration's proposed rules are finalized this fall, the total number of student debt relief recipients during Biden's term would increase to 30 million, the Education Department said in August.