PLF Suing Biden over Student Loans

On September 27, 2022, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) announced that it is suing the Biden administration in an effort to halt the President’s cancellation of student loan debt.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Frank Garrison, a public interest lawyer in Indiana. He has been making payments on his student loans for six years. He will automatically have $20,000 of his debt cancelled. According to PLF,

He did not ask for cancellation, doesn’t want it, and has no way to opt out of it.

The state of Indiana will tax the cancelled debt, which will leave him worse off financially. PLF states that hundreds of thousands of public interest workers face a similar situation.

Public interest workers aren’t the only individuals who will experience financial costs that were not voluntarily chosen. Taxpayers—the individuals who will pay for this boondoggle—will also be worse off. And they too will have no way to opt out.

The Department of Education, the defendant in the case, called the lawsuit “baseless” and said that

opponents of the debt relief plan are trying anything they can to stop this program that will provide needed relief to working families.

Of course, the administration conveniently ignores the additional financial burden the program will place on working families through higher taxes, inflation, or both.

Steve Simpson, an attorney at PLF, said,

Loan cancellation will make Americans more divided, as those who paid their loans—or never went to college—will have good reason to think that we no longer have a government of, by, and for the people.

With the mid-term election fast approaching, this is nothing more than an undisguised attempt to buy votes from the forty million borrowers who may qualify for the program. If it is successful, we can expect more of the same in the future.