WASHINGTON (WCMH) — A presidential campaign promise to forgive millions of Americans’ student loans has been defeated.

On the final day of the its term, the U.S. Supreme Court declared President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan unconstitutional, cementing the death of a program that would have reduced nearly 44 million borrowers’ debts.

The plan, which would have forgiven $10,000 in federal student loans for people making less than $125,000 and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, faced an array of legal challenges days after applications launched. In February, the federal government defended Biden’s debt relief plan before the Supreme Court, arguing against challenges that Biden doesn’t have the power to cancel student debt and should have sought congressional approval.

Two months before the student loan payment moratorium is to expire, on Friday the Supreme Court agreed with challengers that Biden did not have the power to introduce the plan — only Congress did.

The federal government argued that the debt relief program’s legitimacy originates from a post-9/11 law allowing the Secretary of Education to waive student financial assistance program provisions in “connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court disagreed, ruling that the law the executive branch used to justify its plan was not a “modest adjustment” the legislation intended to cover.

“However broad the meaning of ‘waive or modify,’ that language cannot authorize the kind of exhaustive rewriting of the statute that has taken place here,” Roberts wrote.

Nearly 1.8 million Ohioans have federal student loans totaling $62.3 billion, according to the Education Data Initiative. With an average balance of $34,721, 15% of Ohio’s residents hold about 4% of the nation’s $1.635 trillion in federal student loan debt.

Since March 2020, monthly payments – and interest rate accruals – have been paused, with President Joe Biden delaying resumption amid attempts at canceling millions in debt. When he most recently extended the moratorium last November, Biden promised payments would resume by Aug. 30.

In her dissent, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan argued her counterparts in the majority overreached in their decision by hearing the case in the first place.

“The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan. They are classic ideological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs,” Kagan wrote. “In giving those States a forum — in adjudicating their complaint — the Court forgets its proper role. The court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies.”

With or without the court’s ruling, student loan payments will resume Aug. 30, after the Senate included in its debt relief bill a provision to strip Biden of his unilateral power to extend the moratorium. The legislation, in part, ended the payment pause and requires congressional approval for all future student loan payment moratoriums. 

Also on Friday, the Supreme Court sided with a Christian web designer who claimed that being forced to design a wedding registry website for a gay couple violated her First Amendment rights. The court held that state anti-discrimination laws requiring publicly-serving businesses to produce speech-related work against a person’s beliefs amounts to compelled speech.

Read the court’s decision on the student debt relief program below.