Now that the Supreme Court has blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan, 40 million borrowers — a disproportionate number of them women, people of color and low-income individuals — must prepare to repay the debt they had hoped would be forgiven.

On Friday, the court decided unanimously in U.S. Department of Education v. Brown that the plaintiffs, two borrowers who sought to block student loan forgiveness because they did not qualify for any or all of the loan relief the Biden administration offered, had no legal standing to sue. However, the court ruled against the president in Biden v. Nebraska, in which six Republican-led states argued that canceling loan debt would have an adverse financial impact on student loan servicers in their jurisdictions. In both cases, the plaintiffs argued that the president did not have the authority to implement loan forgiveness.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority, with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.

In August, the White House announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers with annual incomes under $125,000. Opponents of the plan filed lawsuits shortly afterward, blocking the president’s ability to offer relief as federal and private education debt topped an estimated $1.7 trillion.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the two cases that reached the court argued that the Biden administration needed approval from Congress to broadly forgive $400 billion in student debt. The Biden administration said that it had the right to cancel the debt because the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003 allows the education secretary to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” during national emergencies, which include crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

To win the case, the plaintiffs had to do more than question whether the Biden administration could eliminate hundreds of billions of student debt. Since Article III of the Constitution specifies that people suing in federal court illustrate that a government policy has harmed them directly, they also had to demonstrate that they had legal standing to sue. The states managed to do that.

The Biden defeat is a blow to borrowers and debt relief advocates.

Before the decision, debt cancellation advocates circulated a petition demanding that Justice Samuel Alito recuse himself from the case after investigative reporting linked him to a hedge fund manager and financial backer of one of the debt relief lawsuits. Alito voted against the forgiveness plan.

As Republicans in Congress have tried to block debt forgiveness, Democrats have staunchly defended the relief plan. Among them is Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who said in a statement after the Supreme Court’s decision, “I vehemently disagree with this decision. The court put monied interests above the law and the will of the people today. The president’s plan to cancel student debt would change and save lives, and borrowers across the country who feel devastated by this unjust ruling should know that this fight is not over.”

Pressley wants the White House to use other tools to cancel student debt.

Read the full article about the blocked student loan relief plan by Nadra Nittle at The 19th.