US President Joe Biden's plan to erase billions in student debt has been rejected by the US Supreme Court.
The plan, which would have forgiven about $10,000 (£7,800) per borrower - and up to $20,000 in some cases - is effectively canceled by the 6-3 decision.
However, the plan has been in limbo ever since some conservative states filed lawsuits, claiming the president exceeded his powers. The High Court concurred.
Over 40 million American borrowers' loans will be impacted by the decision.
From roughly $500 billion in 2007 to $1 point 6 trillion in 2018, the total amount of federal student debt has more than tripled.
In two different lawsuits, one involving two individual student loan borrowers and six Republican-led states (Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina), the Biden administration was up against plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs argued that in both instances, the executive branch lacked the authority to so broadly cancel student loan debt.
The Biden administration's plan was effectively rejected by the Supreme Court, which determined that the two individual borrowers lacked legal standing because they had not made a convincing case that the loan forgiveness plan would harm them.
The Biden administration claimed during arguments in February that it had the authority to "waive or modify" loan provisions to safeguard borrowers affected by "a war or other military operation or national emergency" in accordance with a 2003 law known as the Heroes Act, or Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act.
The Supreme Court ruled that while the act permits Mr. Biden's education secretary, Miguel Cardona, to "make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them," it does not allow him to completely change them.
The changes made by the Biden administration, according to Justice John Roberts, "created a novel and fundamentally different" loan forgiveness program that "expanded forgiveness to nearly every borrower" in the US.
He continued by saying that the administration's application of the Heroes Act "does not even remotely resemble how it has been used in the past."
