The Biden administration is promising to appeal two federal district court rulings this week blocking its new loan forgiveness plan, despite the Supreme Court already blocking the plan’s precursor last year.

On Monday, separate federal district judges in Kansas and Missouri blocked provisions of the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan from going into effect on July 1.

“Just last year, the Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the President to force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans — to the enormous tune of $430 billion,” the attorneys general of Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma wrote in their lawsuit against the plan. “In striking down that attempt, the Court declared that the President cannot ‘unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.’ Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that ‘the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.’”

The states said the student forgiveness plan was an attempt by President Biden to unilaterally “impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress.” 

The Justice Department will appeal both rulings, the Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, wrote in a statement on X on Tuesday. “We will not stop defending SAVE, the most affordable repayment plan in history from attacks from Republican elected officials.” 

He said the administration’s plan provides “debt relief to more than 4.75 million Americans” in the form of “fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, providing income-driven repayment plans, relief for borrowers with disabilities, and relief for borrowers burdened with debt from predatory schools.” 

“We will continue to provide this long-overdue relief, no matter how many times Republican elected officials and their allies try to stop us,” he wrote. 

While the lawsuits against the loan forgiveness plan were brought by GOP-led states, the two federal judges blocking it this week are both appointees of President Obama. The appeal announcement comes only a week after a new report from the Congressional Budget Office indicated that the budget deficit will hit $2 trillion this year — a nearly half-a-billion dollar increase from previous estimates, driven mostly by an additional $145 billion in costs from Mr. Biden’s student loan forgiveness.