If any of these legal challenges can make it to trial, Joe Biden’s massively unconstitutional student-loan debt forgiveness program won’t stand a chance. A federal judge even hinted at that yesterday, noting that the lawsuit from six states to block Biden’s Academia bailout raises “important and significant challenges.”

That’s not enough to get to a trial, unfortunately — at least for now:

A federal judge in Missouri denied a request by a group of Republican state leaders to block the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness program, a boost for the White House as it plans to begin canceling debt in the coming days.

Thursday’s ruling, by U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey of St. Louis, said GOP officials representing six states didn’t have standing to challenge the loan forgiveness because they couldn’t show they had been harmed by the Biden program.

The judge denied the states’ request for a preliminary injunction to stop the program from moving forward, a move that gives the Biden administration a green light—for now—to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans.

Judge Autrey, an appointee of President George W. Bush, didn’t rule on whether the loan-forgiveness program was lawful. Because the states lacked standing, the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case, he said.

It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising. The rules of standing for civil actions are fairly stringent, so as to allow courts to dismiss nuisance cases and activist efforts to conduct politics through lawfare. It’s not enough to raise constitutional issues in this case, since the constitutional authority abused in this case belongs to Congress and not the states (the exclusive appropriation power of the legislature in Article I). The states had to demonstrate real and actionable harm and not just a speculative injury.

And right now, those arguments are a bit on the thin side, Judge Autrey ruled:

Judge Autrey, however, found that none of the states’ alleged injuries established that they had a legal right to pursue their challenge. The claims, for instance, about the potential for lost tax revenues were “merely speculative,” the judge said.

The Biden administration made recent adjustments to the debt-relief eligibility requirements in ways that eliminated other injuries alleged, the judge said.

It’s disappointing, but may not be the end. This did seem to be the most promising of the lawsuits that have been filed so far against the Academia bailout. Another is already in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a challenge to a dismissal in Wisconsin, but an emergency appeal for escalation to the Supreme Court just got shot down yesterday as well, without comment by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

This decision in Missouri will likely get escalated immediately to the Eighth Circuit, likely within days. The judges on that panel might have more room to rethink the standing issue, given the explicit constitutional positioning of sovereign states. After all, the balance of power within the Constitution is not only between the three branches of the federal government, but also between the states and the federal government and particularly the executive branch. If Congress won’t stand up to defend its exclusive prerogative over the power of the purse — as the Fifth Circuit emphasized in its decision on the CFPB on Wednesday — then the states’ vested interest in ensuring the proper constitutional order becomes all the more acute.

Or so we hope, anyway.

This morning, I’ll be filling in for our pal Hugh Hewitt on his syndicated radio show, airing from 6-9 am ET, live from the home studio deep in the heart of Texas! We will have a great lineup of guests and regular contributors:

• Christian Toto
• John Birsch, Alliance Defending Freedom

We’ll also take your calls to the show at 800-520-1234, and you can watch the show live at The Hughniverse. There’s a great chat room that goes with it, and lots of original content in the troll-free websurfing experience for subscribers. The audio also streams at HughHewitt.com.