UNBIASED Politics (2/20/25): Social Security Checks for 300-Year-Olds? PLUS $5K DOGE Dividend Checks, Trump's IVF, Agency Accountability, and COVID Vaccine Orders, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics. Today is Thursday, February 20th. Let's talk about some news, starting off with this new court ruling out of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upholds and actually expands an existing ban on former President Biden's SAVE plan. so there are actually a few things i want to address here i of course want to tell you why the court ruled the way that it did but i also want to talk about why we're still seeing these loan forgiveness cases in the courts because i know a lot of people get confused at the fact that the supreme court already struck down one of biden's loan forgiveness plans in 2023 yet here we are still seeing these loan forgiveness plans being implemented and challenged in the courts so we'll clear that up as well but first i want to talk about what the save plan is
The SAVE plan is also called, or it is called, I should say, the Saving on a Valuable Education plan. And it is an income-driven repayment plan that the Biden administration introduced in an attempt to make student loan repayment more affordable. Income-driven, meaning your monthly student loan payment is based on your income. Under SAVE, payments for undergraduate loans were capped at 5% of discretionary income, and this was a significant reduction from the 10% previously required. Furthermore, and this is the part that matters most, borrowers with smaller loan balances, so balances $12,000 or less, were eligible to have their loans completely forgiven after 10 years of payments. And then for each $1,000 above that, there was an extra year added. So if you had $13,000 in loans, you were eligible for forgiveness after 11 years of payments, $14,000 in loans eligible for forgiveness after 12 years of payments, so on and so forth.
The SAVE plan also included other features like preventing unpaid interest from accumulating, a higher income exemption, and a provision allowing married borrowers who file taxes separately to exclude their spouse's income from payment calculations. So following the enactment of the SAVE plan, seven states sued the administration. Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma. And the states argued, among other things, that the administration had exceeded its authority in implementing save because they argued the secretary of education does not have the authority to actually forgive loans through an income driven repayment plan. The secretary can help make repayment easier.
But the secretary can't forgive completely. So upon filing that lawsuit, the states asked for what's called a temporary injunction, which would stop the administration from being able to implement the SAVE plan while the lawsuit was pending. The district court, which is the lowest court in the system, granted that request in part. The district court basically said, We're going to put on pause the loan forgiveness feature of the plan, but the administration can still implement the other features like the reduced payment threshold and the bar on interest accrual. From there, both parties actually appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Biden administration appealed because they felt the injunction went too far, whereas the states felt the injunction didn't go far enough. So in this week's ruling, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals not only agreed with the states, but expanded the scope of the injunction and blocked the save plan in its entirety.
Specifically, the court said, "...we conclude that the district court correctly did not limit its injunction, but erred by not preliminary enjoining the entire rule." The court felt that by not blocking the plan in its entirety would lead to confusion and chaos and that it made more sense to do as it instructed. So what can we expect from here? Well, the Trump administration, which has since been substituted for the Biden administration in this case, can obviously choose to file an appeal and go to the Supreme Court, but I don't anticipate the current administration doing that. So what will most likely happen is this plan will remain blocked
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