Study Guide

As litigation surrounding the Biden-Harris administration’s student debt forgiveness plan persists, the administration announced an extension of the student loan repayment pause through June 30, 2023. In an announcement earlier this year regarding student loan forgiveness, monthly payments were set to resume on January 1, 2023. Now that the loan forgiveness is the subject of litigation, the administration has again paused student loan payments.

On Thursday, November 11, Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas released a decision that found the Biden-Harris administration’s Federal Student Debt Relief Plan was unconstitutional.

Late on Friday, October 21, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the Biden-Harris administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan while it considers a lawsuit brought by six Republican state attorneys general to block the program. The court announced that it would hear the emergency request levied by Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina on an expedited basis, with briefs from each side due Monday and Tuesday. The court issued the stay after the states sent a notice of appeal to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday night following the denial of their case by U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey.

On Thursday, October 20, the Biden-Harris Administration’s Student Debt Relief Program prevailed in two early legal cases challenging the plan. Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied an emergency bid to obstruct the program from a Wisconsin conservative group, while a federal judge in Missouri dismissed a challenge to the plan by six Republican-led states.

In July 2022, the DOJ released a Comprehensive Cyber Review report (the “Review”) summarizing its assessment of its own cyber-related activities and including recommendations focused on its cyber-centric “offensive” (i.e., cyber threat investigations and enforcement) and “defensive” (i.e., approaches to risk mitigation) activities. A key finding declared that “many of the cybersecurity provisions and standards set forth for federal contractors were found to be insufficiently rigorous.” The Review went on to note that where contractual cybersecurity standards were not met, the Department’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative (CCFI), first announced in October 2021, would continue to utilize the False Claims Act (FCA) to pursue cybersecurity-related cases against government contractors and grant recipients. The Review comes on the heels of a recent FCA settlement with Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc. Many colleges, universities and independent research institutions are now in the midst of planning for enhanced research security obligations arising out of the January 2022 National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 Implementation Guidance (the “NSPM-33 Guidance”).

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In a decision likely to have a broad impact on many Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plan fiduciaries, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court and held that a breach of fiduciary duty claim, which alleged that the fiduciaries of two defined contribution plans sponsored by Northwestern University failed to properly monitor their offered investments, could proceed to discovery.

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Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia granted a nationwide preliminary injunction against enforcement of Executive Order 14042 involving the vaccine mandate for federal contractors. The decision adds to a string of cases decided in the past few weeks blocking vaccine requirements issued by the administration. We have attached a link to the case here. Federal courts have now blocked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard with its vaccinate-or-test mandate and the vaccination requirement for healthcare workers contained in an interim final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).