Good news: earlier this month, Joe Biden’s Department of Education wiped out a total of $39 billion in federal student debt for more than eight hundred thousand people.

The relief will come to some borrowers whose loan servicers either mistakenly or deliberately miscategorized their loan status or steered them away from more advantageous loan terms to which they were entitled. The department says that millions more borrowers who were similarly affected will receive relief sometime in the next year.

But an ostensibly technical detail throws into question the Biden administration’s avowed commitment to canceling student debt more broadly. As the New York Times writes, affected borrowers “will not have to apply — their debts will be automatically discharged.”