Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, says the law firm is asking the court to grant its the emergency motion quickly. The motion could be rejected but the law firm warns time is running out before the administration takes action.
“We really do not know,” Kruckenberg says of the court’s decision. “But what we are certainly hoping for, and what we think is likely, is that the court will put the program on hold while it at least gets a response from the Department of Education and thinks about it.”
In its own lawsuit, Garrison v U.S. Department of Education, Pacific Legal joined others in challenging the federal government's bailout program. That lawsuit was filed in September and is on appeal right now before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The cancellation of student loan debt has been a top priority of far-left Democrats for years. Biden announced in August the federal government would magically wipe away the debt of tens of millions of Americans at an estimated cost of $800 million.
A wave of lawsuits quickly hit the courts alleging the federal government has no legal authority to wipe away student loans. A federal judge in October dismissed a lawsuit filed by six states, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned away an appeal by the Job Creators Network the very same day.
So far those legal efforts to halt the bailout keep failing in the courts, which is why Pacific Legal is pleading with the nation's highest court to allow those remaining lawsuits to be decided.
Regarding a president’s authority to forgive student loans, Kruckenberg says there is no legal right to simply declare those debts don’t exist anymore.
“Not only is it illegal but this is a tremendous amount of government expenditure,” he warns. “This is a huge amount of money that we are all paying just for the president to say on the eve of an election, to his constituents, 'I gave you some free money.'"
