The legal obstacles to President Biden’s plan to forgive billions of dollars of student loan debt are giving way just as that program is on the verge of wiping away thousands of dollars in loans for millions of Americans. 

Efforts to halt the program — whose cost has been pegged at $500 billion, with some estimates putting it north of a trillion dollars — suffered two setbacks on Thursday, as judges have thus far demonstrated reluctance to block the program on constitutional grounds. 

At the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett declined to hear an emergency appeal from a Wisconsin taxpayer group, the Brown County Taxpayers Association. The group argued the plan evinced “a complete disregard for limitations on the constitutional spending authority.”

To secure “standing,” or the ability to bring the case, the BCTA argued that the loan forgiveness scheme ran afoul of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which assigns Congress — not the president — the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “pay the Debts.” 

In declining to take up the case in an unsigned note with no dissent, and no referral to the wider court, Justice Barrett did not react to the merits of BCTA’s position. The justices merely declined to hear the case post haste, choosing to let it ripen through lower court litigation.

One such case was brought in Missouri by the attorneys general of six Republican-led states seeking to halt Mr. Biden’s plan in its tracks. Judge Henry Edward Autrey ruled only on the question of standing, and held that the harm the states alleged was “merely speculative.” To bring a case, plaintiffs must allege what the high court terms an “injury in fact.” 

To surmount that bar, the states alleged economic pain from lost tax revenue and other financial loss stemming from the executive action. Judge Autrey acknowledged, “While Plaintiffs present important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan, the current Plaintiffs are unable to proceed to the resolution of these challenges.”

The states have promised to appeal. The clock is ticking, however, as debt is expected to begin disappearing on Sunday. As of Tuesday, 12 million people had applied to have their loans forgiven.