16 million student-loan borrowers have now been approved for debt cancellation, Biden says — but they won't see relief 'in the coming days' due to a GOP lawsuit

Biden says the Education Department has approved 16 million student-loan borrowers for relief, but that forgiveness has been blocked by a GOP lawsuit.

• The Education Department has so far approved 16 million student-loan borrowers for debt relief, Biden said.
• But while they should be getting relief in the next few days, a GOP group stopped that from happening.
• The relief is currently on pause until the 8th Circuit makes a final decision on the legality of the relief.

Millions of student-loan borrowers could be getting debt relief this week — but a group of Republicans are making sure that doesn't happen.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden wrote on Twitter that 26 million student-loan borrowers have so far applied for up to $20,000 in debt relief through the online form at studentaid.gov, and as of this week, the Education Department will have approved 16 million of them to get their loans forgiven.

However, those borrowers won't be seeing the benefits anytime soon because the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily paused the relief, in response to a lawsuit filed by six Republican-led states who argued the policy would hurt their states' tax revenues, along with those of loan company MOHELA.

"That's 16 million Americans, so far, who should be seeing student debt relief in the coming days," Biden wrote. "But that relief is on hold – because Republican elected officials are doing everything they can to deny it, even to their own constituents."

"We're fighting these attacks from Republican elected officials in the courts," Biden added. "I will never apologize for helping working- and middle-class Americans as they recover from the pandemic."

—President Biden (@POTUS) November 3, 2022

Biden's debt relief plan has been hit with at least five other lawsuits seeking to block its implementation. While the cases have either been dismissed or appealed, a court has yet to officially strike down the whole plan. Still, the decision from the 8th Circuit looms, and until it comes, the Education Department cannot actually give borrowers relief.

This delay could mean that borrowers may have to resume payments in January without the loan forgiveness they applied for, depending on how long it will take for loan companies to process the changes to borrowers' accounts.

The Supreme Court has also been handed two of the lawsuits so far — Justice Amy Coney Barrett quickly dismissed one of them on October 20, and the other one appeared on the high court's docket on Tuesday.

While it's unclear what the 8th Circuit will ultimately decide, the GOP plaintiffs' defense may have weakened this week when Biden's Justice Department informed the court that MOHELA told Missouri Rep. Cori Bush it was not involved with the state's decision to sue the Biden administration on debt relief, undermining the states' key argument that the company would suffer from loan forgiveness.