The last bits of Joe Biden's legacy have met their unpleasant though well-deserved end on Tuesday, as a United States appeals court struck down the latest iteration of the Biden administration's ridiculous student load forgiveness scheme.

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration lacked authority to pursue a student debt relief program designed to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers and speed up loan forgiveness for some.

The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with seven Republican-led states that sued to block the U.S. Education Department's program, whose future was already in doubt with President Donald Trump back in the White House.

The three-judge panel held that the Education Department exceeded its authority by trying to use a Higher Education Act provision that allows for income-based loan repayment plans to adopt debt forgiveness on the scale provided by Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan.

To say that the future of the program was "already in doubt" due to Donald Trump's reelection is as much of an understatement as referring to the Spanish Inquisition as a "little unpleasant." 

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Here are more details on the court's opinion:

U.S. Circuit Judge L. Steven Grasz, appointed by Trump during his first term in office, said the Higher Education Act's text made clear that Congress only authorized repayment plans that lead to actual repayment of student loans. 

Grasz, whose opinion was joined by two fellow Republican-appointed judges, said the Biden administration had "gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid." 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who led the litigation, said on X that while Biden is out of office, "this precedent is imperative to ensuring a president cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else's Ivy League debt."

And that's the important bit.

Note that the difference between rearranging a payment plan, which is what the Higher Education Act allows, and outright canceling student loans. Also, let's dispense with the "forgiveness" horse squeeze. The Biden administration wasn't "forgiving" anything; that would imply that there had been some wrongdoing at some point. These students signed contracts, they were made aware of repayment terms, they were made aware of any options they had, and there's an end to it.

The young skulls of mush who took out these loans are the only ones morally responsible for repaying them. These loans can't be "canceled" or "forgiven." Contracts were signed, money was disbursed, and now these young people are going to pay them back. That's all.

It would be interesting indeed to know what degrees have the greatest amount of unpaid student debt. It's a safe bet that the recipients of various Underwater Ethnic Dog-Polishing Studies degrees have the most trouble paying off their student loans because they are garbage degrees with no potential for employment at anything above the barista level. Worse, some of these degrees are offered at some horrendously expensive schools. It's as I've written many times in the past, there are only two questions one needs to ask the student-loan whiners, followed by one statement: "Did you apply for a student load? Did you sign a contract? Yes? Then shut up and pay your loan back."

Now, can we look into closing down the Department of Education and eliminating any federal government involvement in the financing of education, which isn't allowed by the Constitution in any case?