February 16, 2023: -Dozens of Republican members of Congress have filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, which argues that the Biden government’s student loan forgiveness plan has to stand unlawful.

“Congress has forgiven the federal student loan debt in specific, narrow circumstances,” arguing the brief filed by over 40 GOP senators regarding Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “This is not one of them.”

The Republican senators are writing that the plan threatens “to deprive the Nation of almost half a trillion dollars and is offending the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.”

Over half of House Republicans, or 128 congress members, also filed a brief with the country’s highest court, making a similar argument. They state that “petitioners’ assertion of power to forgive every federal student loan in the area, potentially even a decade following the Covid-19 pandemic ends, increases significant separation of powers concerns.”

This month, the briefs were filed as the Supreme Court is preparing to hear oral statements, scheduled for February 28, on the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan.

In response to the comment, a Biden administration official said, “the only thing notable regarding this brief is that, if these Republican lawmakers find their way, millions of their constituents will be denied debt relief.”

Looking at the briefs registered with the Supreme Court so far regarding President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel $20,000 in student debt for tens of millions of Americans, it’s evident that this is an increasingly partisan issue, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

“The opposition to the president’s plan is nearly entirely Republican,” Kantrowitz stated.

GOP-led states and conservative groups have brought nearly six lawsuits against the comprehensive loan forgiveness policy, and the Supreme Court has dealt with taking two of those cases. For now, the legal troubles have paused the Biden administration from beginning to cancel the student debt, though it had planned to begin doing so within months of its August announcement.

The Biden administration has insisted that it’s acting within the law, which points out that the Heroes Act of 2003 allows the U.S. education secretary to change the federal student loan system during national necessities. The nation has been working under an emergency declaration starting from March 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.

The law is a thing of the 9/11 terrorist attacks over two decades ago. A premature version of it had provided relief to federal student loan borrowers who those events had impacted.

The Republican senators counter that that law “permits modest measures to prevent certain people from losing ground on their loans because of the hardships induced by a war or national emergency.”