On July 18, the Eighth Circuit for the U.S. Court of Appeals granted the State of Missouri’s emergency motion for an administrative stay to prevent President Biden’s student loan relief plan from taking effect. The White House released a fact sheet in August 2023 on the President’s SAVE Plan. According to the complaint filed by Missouri and six other states, President Biden’s final rule implementing the SAVE Plan, which would have gone into effect on July 1, allegedly attempted to cancel millions of dollars of student loans improperly. The State of Missouri had taken issue with the President’s plan to “evade the limits Congress set out in [the Higher Education Act] for the [income-based repayment] program” by allegedly hiking the exempt-income threshold from 150 to 225 percent, slashing the payment obligation from 15 to 5 percent for undergraduates, and forgiving loans after as few as ten years instead of 25. The administrative stay will be in place until the 8th Circuit rules on the appellants’ motion for an injunction.
