By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -Seven Republican-led states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to challenge President Joe Biden’s administration’s latest student debt forgiveness plan, saying the U.S. Department of Education was taking steps to start canceling loans as soon as this week.
The lawsuit came less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration’s bid to revive a different student debt relief plan that was designed to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers and speed up loan forgiveness for some.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Brunswick, Georgia, state attorneys general took aim at a rule the Education Department proposed in April that would provide for a waiver of federal student loan debts for an estimated 27.6 million borrowers.
Attorneys general from states including Georgia and Missouri say they recently obtained documents showing the Education Department has instructed federal loan servicers to begin canceling billions of dollars of loans as early as either Tuesday or Saturday.
Their lawsuit argued the Education Department had no authority to do so and that the plan ran afoul of federal rulemaking procedures.
“We successfully halted their first two illegal student loan cancellation schemes; I have no doubt we will secure yet another win to block the third one,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)