On Monday afternoon, a Federal appeals court was the latest to block Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. The event is the second court ruling in a week blocking the program, following the first halt which occurred in a courtroom in Texas earlier in the week.

This is the latest push to halt Biden’s program that could see up to $20,000 in student debt forgiven for about 40 million Americans.

In total Americans owe around $1.75 trillion dollars in student loan debt.

Today’s ruling was made by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Missouri.

This latest intervention will likely prevent any cancellations from occurring before the 2022 year and will likely act as a positive development for federal student loan servicers. Some of these include; SoFi Technologies (SOFI), NelNet (NNI), Maximus (MMS), Sallie May (SLM), Navient (NAVI), Discover Financial Services (DFS) and many more that will be affected.

The courts are providing various reasons as to why they believe the program should be stopped. Some of these reasons include judges declaring the move is ‘unlawful’ and that it could create multiple ‘financial harms’.

The court of St Louis moved forward with the ruling as its state’s Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) would be significantly impacted financially if its loans became inactive. This would have a flow on effect with the state’s ability to fund higher education at its public colleges.

MOHELA services $168.1 billion in student loans as a not-for-profit organisation.

The St Louis panel stated in the ruling “Whatever the eventual outcome of this case, it will affect the finances of millions of Americans with student loan debt as well as those Americans who pay taxes to finance the government and indeed everyone who is affected by such far-reaching fiscal decisions,” the panel said in its ruling.”

The ruling acted as a victory for conservative states that were impacted by the halt of student loan repayments and interest including; Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina.

Student loan debt related stocks have experienced a tough year of share price weakness fuelled by concerns around the program in 2022 with SOFI falling -62%, MMS retreating -23%, SLM trading -13% lower, NAVI trading -25.6% lower and DFS down almost -11%.

NNI has outperformed peers and recovered most of its losses and is trading relatively flat over 2022.

For now, investors must wait and watch to see if the moratorium which is slated to end on the 31st of December, will need to be extended into 2023.

This article originally appeared on Fintel

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