NAACP to lead protests outside Supreme Court for student loan forgiveness

More than 20 organizations, including the NAACP, will rally outside the Supreme Court next week in support of student loan forgiveness.

The rally will take place on Feb. 28, the same day the court will hear oral arguments in two separate cases challenging the Biden Administration’s student debt cancellation program.

Wisdom Cole, NAACP’s national director of Youth & College, said “generations of people” will come out on Tuesday to make their voices heard.

“The battle to cancel student debt has been a long one,” Cole told The Hill. “We know that Biden’s plan is legal, it is supported, it is backed up.”

Student loan repayments have been paused for nearly three years in light of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, President Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $10,000 in federal loan debt and up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income students.

Though organizations like the NAACP praised the president for what they called a step toward racial equity, Republican attorneys general and student-loan borrowers in Texas have filed lawsuits challenging the action, raising questions of equity and executive power now before the Supreme Court.

Myra Brown, one of the plaintiffs in the suit from borrowers, is not eligible for any relief under Biden’s plan because her loans are not federal loans. The second plaintiff, Alexander Taylor, is eligible for $10,000 in relief but does not qualify for $20,000 in forgiveness because he didn’t receive a Pell Grant.

Cole said these arguments take a short-sighted view of equity, as nearly 60 percent of Pell Grant recipients are Black, according to the Education Data Initiative, and Black Americans are disproportionately affected by student loan debt.

“We’ve seen the increasing cost of college and how that has impacted the Black community because we come from a lower economic background. We are living in different realities that we have different experiences in college,” Cole said.

“Saying that this is not fair is disregarding the years of injustice that have happened to the Black community and to people of color, and how education — in theory — was supposed to be the great equalizer, supposed to be able to give access to opportunities, but it hasn’t,” he added.

Persis Yu, managing counsel and deputy executive director at the Student Borrower Protection Center, added that while the forgiveness might seem unfair to plaintiffs like Brown and Taylor, the broader attack on the forgiveness program is driven by partisan politics.

The conservative Job Creators Network Foundation Legal Action Fund filed the lawsuit to block Biden’s program in October. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, argues that Brown and Taylor were denied the ability to comment on the regulation.

“The logical remedy for the harm that they said they suffered would be to expand the program, but that’s not what they’re asking for,” Yu said. “They’re asking for it to be completely invalidated for no one to get relief, and I think that’s how this is not genuinely about the borrowers who are excluded, but this is a politically motivated lawsuit as well.”

Elaine Parker, president of the Jobs Creators Network Foundation, said the group agreed with those planning to attend the rally that student debt is a crisis but does not believe the Biden administration has the authority to provide loan forgiveness.

“This lawsuit is not about race; it’s about the rule of law. The Biden administration is using this unlawful student loan bailout for political gain. All this rally does is prove that the administration’s political calculus was accurate,” she said.

Tuesday’s rally will feature speeches not only from Yu and other advocates, but borrowers who have been negatively impacted by student loan debt as well.

“One of the things that I think gets lost in all of the legalese is the people,” Yu said. “Forty million people are resting on what happens in that courtroom.

“Having that rally and having those people there is incredibly important to understand what’s at stake. These are real people’s lives. These are real people’s finances that are at stake going on inside that building. I want people to look the borrowers in the face when they say that they want to take that relief away from them,” she added.

Updated: 3:20 p.m.

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