Missouri, Kansas will appeal as White House celebrates court win on student debt plan

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office said Thursday night that Missouri and five other Republican-leaning states will appeal a federal judge’s ruling dismissing a lawsuit that challenged President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

Schmitt and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, both Republicans seeking higher office, joined GOP officials from four other states to file a lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court attempting to block Biden’s plan. They alleged the states’ student loan servicer faces financial harm because of the plan.

Judge Henry Edward Autrey, from the Eastern District of Missouri, said the states weren’t able to adequately prove that their states were harmed by the program and lacked standing to bring the case.

Schmitt, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Missouri, promised to appeal the ruling, which comes just weeks before the Nov. 8 election.

“The Biden Administration’s push to cancel student loan debt will unfairly burden working class families with even more economic woes,” Schmitt’s spokesman Chris Nuelle wrote in an email Thursday evening. “We plan to appeal this decision.”

The White House on Thursday night celebrated the ruling. Biden is scheduled to make a speech about his proposal at Delaware State University on Friday afternoon.

“Today, a district judge in Missouri rejected an attempt to prevent implementation of the Administration’s student debt relief plan,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “Republican Members of Congress and Republican Governors are doing everything they can to deny student debt relief, even to their own constituents. The President won’t stop fighting these suits and working to help families as they recover from the pandemic.”

Americans who make less than $125,000 or households that make less than $250,000 are eligible to have up to $10,000 in their loans forgiven and people who received Pell Grants are eligible to have up to $20,000 forgiven. Roughly 777,300 Missourians and 360,900 Kansans will qualify to have a portion of their debt eliminated, according to White House estimates.

John Milburn, a spokesman for Schmidt in Kansas, noted in a statement Friday morning that despite finding the states lacked standing the court “acknowledged in its opinion that the states ‘present important and significant challenges’ to the Biden administration’s student loan debt cancellation program.” Schmidt is seeking to unseat Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in the Nov. 8 election.

“While the court said that the states do not have standing to bring this lawsuit, we continue to believe that they do in fact have standing to raise these important legal challenges,” Milburn said. “As a result, the plaintiff states will be appealing and seeking immediate relief from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.”

The suit is led by Nebraska Attorney General Douglas Peterson. Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina are also plaintiff states.

Republican opposition has largely centered around the cost of Biden’s debt forgiveness plan. The plan is projected to cost the federal government $400 billion over the next 30 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Republicans have objected to the cost.

The Biden administration has already launched an application for people who are seeking to take advantage of the program. Jean-Pierre said Thursday that the administration expects that the majority of the money will go to people who make less than $75,000 and that 23 million Americans will have all of their debt forgiven.

The Star’s Katie Bernard contributed reporting.