By Taylor O’Reilly 
Photo Credit: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
For the past year, President Joe Biden has made efforts to alleviate student loan debt through his executive actions and interactions with the Supreme Court. With election day approaching, questions have arisen concerning how the Supreme Court and Joe Biden’s interactions regarding proposed student loan relief plans could change in the near future.
In July 2023, Biden introduced a student debt relief initiative called the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan. The SAVE plan was crafted to lower the percentage of monthly income that borrowers pay toward their student loan debt.
The SAVE plan proved to be controversial and eventually led to the development of two lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court. These lawsuits were the cases of Alaska v. Department of Education and Missouri v. Department of Education.
In Alaska v. Department of Education and Missouri v. Department of Education, district courts ruled against parts of the SAVE plan, halting further progress on whether to keep the plan or overturn it.
Joe Biden also created the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act, which had similar aims to the SAVE plan. The goal of the HEROES Act was to allow the Secretary of Education to modify student loan forgiveness in case of a national emergency.
In the Department of Education v. Brown, the Supreme Court held that the HEROES Act did not authorize Biden’s proposed loan forgiveness plan of canceling up to $400 billion in student loans. The Court ultimately decided that the HEROES Act did not allow the secretary of education the power to waive laws regarding student loan forgiveness, impeding the aims of the Biden Administration.
In 2023, the Supreme Court made a statement regarding Joe Biden’s initiatives to fight student loan debt through their ruling in the case of Biden v. Nebraska. The court ruled against the Biden Administration’s student loan forgiveness program. It upheld the right to sue for the six states that had originally challenged the program’s constitutionality, including Missouri, Kansas, South Carolina, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Iowa.
More recently, the Supreme Court took action in declining to reinstate the SAVE plan, staying consistent with its previous disapproval of Joe Biden’s initiatives. Many states joined the fight, arguing that the Biden Administration overstepped its authority with certain aspects of the SAVE plan, ultimately freezing further expansion of its aims.
As of October 17, 2024, Biden has approved $175 billion in student loan forgiveness for around 5 million people. Most of the debt was relieved by Biden through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was created to aid government-employed or nonprofit-employed individuals who have made previous payments toward their loan debt.
66% of young voters and people of color view canceling student debt as an important issue. Although we cannot use this information to predict the outcome of the upcoming election, it is helpful when contemplating how student loan forgiveness will be handled in the future depending on whether Trump, who prefers less student debt relief or Harris, who prefers more student debt relief is elected.