When Will the Supreme Court Rule on Student Loan Forgiveness?

The U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of the term blocked President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan.
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Bennett Leckrone is a news writer for BestColleges. Before joining BestColleges, Leckrone reported on state politics with the nonprofit news outlet Maryland Matters as a Report for America fellow. He previously interned for The Chronicle of Higher Ed...
Updated on June 30, 2023
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  • The U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of the term blocked President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan.
  • The court generally releases most of its opinions by the end of June.
  • The Supreme Court isn’t bound by specific rules about when a decision needs to be made, although the court is typically in recess from late June until the first Monday in October.

The U.S. Supreme Court on the last day of the term blocked President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan.

The court heard oral arguments in the cases challenging President Joe Biden's federal student loan forgiveness program on Feb. 28, but millions of borrowers had to wait until June 30 to learn their debts would not be erased.

Some justices in the court's 6-3 conservative majority appeared skeptical of the Biden administration's arguments for the loan forgiveness program during the hearing, BestColleges reported. The program could erase up to $20,000 in federal student loans for millions of borrowers across the country.

Since the hearing, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has declared that Biden's plan to wipe federal student debt must be submitted to Congress, and Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has used it as a bartering piece in negotiations to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Borrowers and debt-forgiveness opponents alike had to wait months to learn how the court would rule, and didn’t know when the court would hand its decision down.