Pause on Student Loan Repayment Extended for the 8th Time

The “final” extension of the pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments and interest turned out to not be so final after all.

The payment and interest pause has been extended for the eighth time, the White House and the Department of Education said Tuesday. Borrowers with federal student loans won’t have to make payments, and loans won’t resume accumulating interest until 60 days after current court cases challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program are resolved or the Department of Education is allowed to move forward with the program.

If the cases aren’t resolved by June 30, payments will resume two months after that. The pause has been in place since the pandemic began and was set to expire at the end of the year. That extension, which said payments would resume in January 2023 and was made in conjunction with the student loan forgiveness plan, had been billed as the “final” one. However, the rollout of Biden’s student loan forgiveness program has not gone as planned, and that’s thrown a wrench into payments resuming. 

The extension buys more time for borrowers who have been waiting to see whether Biden’s forgiveness plan—which would wipe out up to $20,000 per borrower of student loan debt—can survive several ongoing lawsuits. Opponents argue that the administration does not have the legal authority to cancel the debt without Congress’s approval. Federal judges have blocked forgiveness from going through while the cases work their way through the court system, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court.

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