hopefully this one takes.
https://twitter.com/Mike_Saltsman/status/1590860742500065280
It wasn't the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It was the District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Ft. Worth Division, to no one's surprise). Judge Pittman accelerated the case to grant Summary Judgment a mere month after the Complaint was filed. Granted, the Fifth Circuit will probably affirm, because ....
Worth noting that one week ago, Justice Barrett (yes, Amy Coney Barrett) declined, for the second time, to issue a temporary injunction blocking the program pending the Plaintiffs' appeal in a separate, related case. Seems like there's at least 3 similar cases.
Specifically, in Garrison v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 1:22-cv-1895-RLY-TAB (S.D. Ind.), where, as here, individual student loan borrowers brought a lawsuit to enjoin, on a nationwide basis, the Department's authority to forgive student-loan debt on essentially the same grounds. The district court dismissed that case for lack of standing, the Seventh Circuit denied the plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction pending appeal, and the plaintiffs petitioned SCOTUS for a motion for injunction pending appeal. On November 4, 2022, Justice Barrett, as Circuit Justice for the Seventh Circuit, denied the plaintiffs’ application.
I haven't had time to read Judge Pittman's standing analysis, so I don't know if and how the plaintiffs in these two cases differ in any material sense as to that. It would appear *gulp* that this is headed to SCOTUS sooner rather than later.
