Two federal judges enjoined portions of President Joe Biden’s latest student loan bailout scheme on Monday. Simultaneously, another federal judge heard arguments on the constitutionality of the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel and prosecutors’ efforts to gag Donald Trump. Meanwhile, on Monday, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed three new briefs in the Delaware federal court where a jury recently convicted him on three counts related to his purchase of a gun.
The Supreme Court added to the busy legal news day by announcing it would hand down decisions from the remaining cases this term on Thursday and Friday, in addition to the previously scheduled Wednesday decision day. Here’s your lawsplainer for all these developments.
Student Loan Bailouts
Monday saw two different rulings freezing efforts by President Biden to “cancel” (i.e. make taxpayers pay instead) an estimated $150 billion in student loans. A Kansas district court granted a preliminary injunction in a case brought by 11 states: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
Presiding Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled that the states had a likelihood of success on the merits of their challenge to the so-called “SAVE” plan, which the Department of Education adopted to cancel student loans for eligible borrowers. The court held that the Higher Education Act did not clearly authorize the Department of Education’s SAVE Plan. Judge Crabtree, however, refused to enjoin the entirety of the student loan bailout, limiting the preliminary injunction to those portions of the
