During the arguments, a Justice Department lawyer portrayed the debt relief as a benefits program rather than an assertion of regulatory power not authorised by Congress. (AP)
The US Supreme Court has handed President Joe Biden a painful defeat, blocking his plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt — a move that had been intended to benefit up to 43 million Americans and fulfil a campaign promise.
The justices ruled on Friday against Biden in a 6-3 decision favouring six conservative-leaning states that objected to the policy.
The court's action dealt a blow to the 26 million US borrowers who applied for relief after Biden announced the plan in August 2022 and a political setback for the Democratic president.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the rest of the court's conservative members, wrote the ruling over a dissent from the court's three liberals.
"From a few narrowly delineated situations specified by Congress, the secretary has expanded forgiveness to nearly every borrower in the country," Roberts said, referring to the US education secretary.
Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina challenged Biden's debt relief, as did two individual borrowers opposed to the plan's eligibility requirements.
The court acted on its final day of rulings in its term that began in October.
Twenty-six million US borrowers applied for relief between when Biden announced the plan in August 2022 until last November, when lower courts blocked the plan.
Conservative majority court
Biden's plan fulfilled his 2020 campaign promise to cancel a portion of $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt but was criticised by Republicans who called it an overreach of his authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while other borrowers received no such relief.
Under the plan, the US government would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student debt for Americans making under $125,000 who obtained loans to pay for college and other post-secondary education and $20,000 for recipients of Pell grants to students from lower-income families.
The ruling came a day after the Supreme Court effectively prohibited affirmative action policies long used by US colleges and universities to raise the number of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority students.
Biden on Thursday said the court, with its conservative majority, was an institution out of touch with the country's basic values.
During February arguments in the loans case, Biden's administration said the plan was authorised under a 2003 federal law called the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act, which empowers the US education secretary to "waive or modify" student financial assistance during war or national emergencies."
Both Biden and his Republican predecessor Donald Trump relied upon the HEROES Act beginning in 2020 to repeatedly pause student loan payments and halt interest from accruing to alleviate financial strain on student loan borrowers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some 53 percent of Americans said they support Biden's debt relief, with 45 percent opposed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from March, with respondents dividing sharply along partisan lines with Democrats broadly supportive and Republicans generally opposed.
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