Florida AG Moody joins student-loan forgiveness suit

“We will fight in court to make sure that hard-working Americans, who are struggling to buy groceries thanks to Biden, are not on the hook for other people’s debt,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement.

PUBLISHED: April 10, 2024 at 8:23 a.m. | UPDATED: April 10, 2024 at 12:23 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and other Republican-led states are suing to block the Biden administration’s student loan repayment plan, which offers a faster path to cancellation and has already been used to forgive loans for more than 150,000 borrowers.

Seven states led by Missouri filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging Biden’s SAVE Plan, which has become a new legal target for his opponents after the Supreme Court toppled the Democratic president’s first attempt at student loan cancellation.

It largely mirrors another suit filed last month by Republican attorneys general in 11 states, led by Kansas.

“We will fight in court to make sure that hard-working Americans, who are struggling to buy groceries thanks to Biden, are not on the hook for other people’s debt,” Moody said in a statement.

Filed just a day after Biden trumpeted yet another proposal to cancel student loans for up to 30 million borrowers, the lawsuit sets the stage for one legal battle and foreshadows another. The suit doesn’t directly challenge Biden’s newest plan for cancellation, but its architect, Missouri’s attorney general, separately threatened to bring action against that plan, too.

A statement from the Education Department says Congress gave the agency power to define terms of certain repayment plans in 1993, and that authority has been used before.

“The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” a statement from the department said.