Home Part of States Newsroom
Brief
More than 800K in NC applied for Biden’s student debt relief

Share

More than 800K in NC applied for Biden’s student debt relief

Jan 31, 2023 | 6:59 am ET
By Rob Schofield
Share
More than 800K in NC applied for Biden’s student debt relief

This post is adapted from a report authored by John L. Micek of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

With President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness program now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, the White House went on offense last week, blasting out state-by-state breakdowns of how many Americans stand to benefit from it.

In all, 26 million people in all 50 states applied — or were automatically eligible — for the onetime relief, the administration said last week. That included 812,000 North Carolinians, 522,000 of whom saw their applications approved and sent to loan servicers, the data showed.

According to the White House, more than 40 million student loan borrowers nationwide would qualify for the one-time relief, with 90 percent of the benefits for out-of-school borrowers going to those earning $75,000 a year or less.

“Millions of those borrowers could be experiencing the benefits of that relief today – were it not for lawsuits brought on by elected officials in some of their own states,” the White House said in a fact-sheet it released last week.

The long-awaited plan, officially announced last year, forgives $20,000 in student debt for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for borrowers earning $125,000 or less annually, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported at the time.

With 55 percent of North Carolina college graduates having student loan debt in 2019-20, the state ranks among the top half in the nation for most student debt, according to the Institute for College Access and Success, a national organization that advocates for accessible and affordable education.

The average debt load of a North Carolina college graduate during the same timeframe was $29,681. In North Carolina, 9 percent of college graduates had private student loan debt, with an average total of $34,015.

Republican opponents immediately went to court to try to stop the debt-forgiveness program, and the U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will hear oral arguments in two of the challenges at the end of February, CNBC reported.

The high court is set to hear challenges brought by six Republican-led states, who argue that “forgiveness will disrupt state entities that profit from federal student loans, as well as a lawsuit backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative advocacy organization, featuring two borrowers in Texas who are partially or fully left out of the president’s relief,” CNBC reported.

It’s possible the nation’s highest court, which has a conservative majority, will strike down the White House’s program, one legal expert told the financial news network.

That’s because the justices swiftly agreed to hear the challenges, suggesting they’re eager to strike it down, Harvard University Law School professor Lawrence Tribe told CNBC.

“It’s basically put the program in deep freeze until it proceeds to most likely dismantle it,” Tribe told CNBC.

In North Carolina, Democratic Congresswoman Alma Adams has been an outspoken defender of student loan debt relief. In announcing the introduction of legislation last summer to codify and expand student loan debt relief, she said: “The debt is too damn high.”