SCOTUS to take up Biden's student loan forgiveness plan in February

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well it's going down then. At least he tried.

Biden definitely timed this right though, he got it out and motivated young voters before the midterms. Had he done it a year earlier it would've been struck down by the midterms.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Technically, couldn't they have just allowed the Texas judges ruling to stand if they wanted to keep the program gutted? Or are they adding salt to the wound by taking it up with zero chance of actually ruling in favor of the administration?

This is the appeal from the Eighth Circuit (in particular, Missouri). (The Texas case was quite different and the Fifth Circuit just yesterday refused to stay that decision.) The district court in Missouri ruled against Missouri and the other states on the standing issue, but the Eighth Circuit determined that Missouri did have standing and put an injunction on the plan. The Biden Administration appealed and was asking SCOTUS to vacate the injunction and let the plan go into effect. It's worth noting that this was the last paragraph of the DOJ's petition to the Court:

This Court should vacate, or at minimum narrow, the injunction pending appeal entered by the court of appeals. If, however, the Court declines to vacate the injunction, it may wish to construe this application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, grant the petition, and set this case for expedited briefing and argument this Term.

I agree that there is little cause for optimism. However, there was virtually no chance for the Biden Administration to win in either the Fifth or Eighth Circuits.

If it is an adverse ruling, those affected will know where it came from. Perhaps the Biden Administration could try doing something through a different avenue. In the meantime, maybe he should just keep student loans on pause for the duration of his Presidency.

EDIT: There are the questions before the Court:

(1) whether respondents have Article III standing;

(2) whether the plan exceeds the Secretary's statutory authority or is arbitrary and capricious.

Keeping the hold indefinitely isn't really an option for various reasons that would take awhile to go over...but the main one is that the servicing companies will probably stop dropping their contracts as they won't be earning as much and it'd be very difficult to replace them with no clear end date to the hold. It's also something Biden doesn't seem to be interested in.