The Biden administration has been hit with another lawsuit that contests its decision to renew its pause on repayment of federal student loans that Congress enacted as a pandemic-relief measure when former President Donald Trump was in the White House and which has been continued eight times without congressional approval, most recently on Nov. 22.
New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market and limited government think tank, against the U.S. Department of Education on April 6 (pdf).
As presented in the NCLA suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the initial loan deferment that Congress passed and which Trump signed on March 27, 2020, was scheduled to last for six months. Yet, when the act expired on Sept. 30, the Department of Education (DOE), without constitutional authority, kept the moratorium in place, as it continues to do, at expense to taxpayers. …