Did Biden cancel student loans after the judge said no?
Executive summary
President Biden’s sweeping COVID-era student loan cancellation plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023, but his administration continued to produce targeted loan cancellations and administrative fixes that wiped out billions in debt for millions of borrowers — even as courts and Republican officials repeatedly sued to block those efforts [1] [2] [3]. The result is a patchwork: some large-scale cancellations were stopped, while other relief measures proceeded and remain contentious in the courts and in Congress [4] [5] [6].
1. The “judge said no” moment: the high court ends the mass-forgiveness plan
The watershed legal loss came when the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the Biden administration exceeded its statutory authority in attempting to cancel up to roughly $400 billion (variously reported as $330–430 billion) in federal student loans under the HEROES Act and related claims of emergency authority, a decision that explicitly blocked the large-scale, one-time forgiveness program the administration had promoted in 2022–23 [1] [2] [3].
2. Not all relief died with that ruling: targeted cancellations and program fixes continued
Hours after the Court’s decision the Department of Education moved into negotiated rulemaking and other administrative routes to provide relief short of the mass-forgiveness plan, and the administration proceeded with a series of targeted actions — from SAVE-plan provisions to fixes for Public Service Loan Forgiveness and other administrative forgiveness programs — that enabled cancellation for many individual borrowers [4] [7] [8].
3. Dollars and people: tens of billions canceled, millions helped — but figures vary by source
The Biden administration points to hundreds of billions in approvals and tens of billions in completed cancellations across nearly four million borrowers as evidence it continued to deliver relief after the Supreme Court setback (the White House cited nearly $138 billion in cancellations for almost 3.9 million borrowers and other milestones) while press outlets reported similar magnitudes — for example, PBS and CNBC documenting additional multi-billion-dollar batches and roughly 3.7–3.9 million borrowers receiving relief by early 2024 [8] [9] [10].
4. Legal pushback and limits: new lawsuits, injunctions, and an appellate ruling
Those administrative workarounds have not been immune to courts: federal judges issued temporary restraining orders against implementation of draft rules, multiple states sued to block rulemaking and mass cancellations, and at least one federal appellate opinion and conservative legal groups have argued portions of later cancellation efforts were unlawful — a dynamic that has left some cancellation efforts paused, reversed, or subject to further appeals [5] [11] [7].
5. Political and narrative stakes: competing agendas shape what “canceled” looks like
Republican committees and conservative think tanks frame ongoing cancellations as executive overreach and taxpayer cost, portraying piecemeal forgiveness as a back door to the mass program the Court struck down, while the administration and Democratic-aligned analysts emphasize borrower relief numbers and program fixes — meaning whether one views the post-ruling cancellations as legitimate policy or unlawful expansion depends heavily on political and ideological vantage point [6] [11] [8].
6. Bottom line: yes — but not the same as the plan the Court stopped
In plain terms, the Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s flagship, broad cancellation scheme, but the administration nonetheless continued to cancel student debt through targeted executive and administrative actions that delivered relief to millions and billions of dollars worth of loans; those actions, however, remain legally contested and have not restored the mass, one-time cancellation the Court prohibited [1] [2] [4] [5].