Republicans Search for Someone Who Can Sue Over Biden's Student Loan Debt Plan Programming note: While Phil is off this week, the D.C. Brief is highlighting some of the best work from TIME's Washington bureau. Here's the latest story from White House correspondent Brian Bennett. To find the authority to cancel billions of dollars in student loans, President Biden turned to two words in a 2003 law: “national emergency.” President George W. Bush had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq when Congress passed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003. The bill, also known as the HEROES Act of 2003, gives the Secretary of Education authority to change student financial assistance programs during a war, military operation, or “national emergency.” Nineteen years later, the Biden administration cited that law this month in announcing a plan to forgive up to $10,000 of student loan debt (and $20,000 of education debt for Pell Grant recipients) for those earning less than $125,000. The national emergency it cited was the COVID-19 pandemic and economic fallout stemming from it. That reasoning is almost certain to be challenged in court. But who can legally challenge the order is unclear. As soon as Biden announced his order, various conservative legal groups began exploring who would have legal standing to sue, which would require proving they would be harmed by Biden’s order. One possibility: the House could sue over the order next year, if Republicans win enough seats to take control in the fall. “It’s on shaky legal ground at best,” says Lanae Erickson, the senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at Third Way, a Washington think tank that looks for non-partisan policy solutions. Erickson is concerned that Biden’s action overreaches in its reliance on the national emergency of the pandemic and that the courts will determine such a step requires congressional action. “The connection to the pandemic is pretty exaggerated, I think.” Biden’s order followed his promise on the campaign trail to take action to help some of the 44 million Americans with a collective $1.7 trillion in education debt hanging over their heads. Just after taking office last year, Biden himself said he wasn’t sure he could use executive action alone to forgive a large tranche of student debt. “I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing with a pen,” he said in February 2021. But since he announced the loan debt forgiveness actions, the administration has rejected doubts about his authority to make such a move. The HEROES Act, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Aug. 25, “authorizes the Secretary of Education to take certain actions he believes they are necessary to ensure a borrower is not placed in a worse position financially due to a national emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.” The federal government temporarily suspended student loan payments early on in the pandemic. Biden announced last week that the suspension would end on Dec. 31. The loan forgiveness plan is targeted to go into effect the next day. “Part of what the legal authority is being used to do here, in a targeted way, is to make sure that those borrowers who are at highest risk of distress after the restart happens, those are the people who are going to get the relief,” says Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council. Since Biden announced the order on Aug. 24, legal groups and experts have speculated on who might have standing to challenge it. Companies that service the student loans may attempt to prove they’ve been harmed. A person who makes an income just over the $125,000 threshold for forgiveness could potentially claim to have standing. Or one of the chambers of Congress could try to take the Biden Administration to court, arguing that Biden’s loan action steps on congressional power over the nation’s finances. But such a move could only happen if Republicans won enough seats to take control of the House or Senate. Such a suit would not be unprecedented. Read the full story on the hunt for a plaintiff to challenge Biden's student loan debt plan. | 
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