Supreme Court Rejects Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority with its plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt, dashing the hopes of tens of millions of borrowers and imposing new restrictions on presidential power.

It was a resounding setback for President Biden, who had vowed to help borrowers “crawl out from under that mountain of debt.” More than 45 million people across the country owe $1.6 trillion in federal loans for college, according to government data, and the proposed debt cancellation, announced by Mr. Biden last summer, would have been one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history.

The decision, the last of a tumultuous term, was part of a trio of muscular rulings on Thursday and Friday in which the court divided 6 to 3 along partisan lines. In addition to rejecting the loan forgiveness program, the court’s conservative majority also sharply limited affirmative action in higher education and dealt a blow to gay rights.

The dismissal of the plan intensified pressure on Mr. Biden to try to fulfill a promise to a key constituency as his bid for re-election gets underway, and he made clear in remarks on Friday that he would seize on the ruling as a campaign issue.

“Today’s decision has closed one path,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he had directed his education secretary to examine a different law by which his administration could forgive debt. “Now we’re going to pursue another.”

But the Supreme Court’s decision, the latest in a series of rulings curbing presidential power in the absence of clear congressional authorization, limited Mr. Biden’s alternatives and suggested that other attempts to address student debt would be met with skepticism at the court.