More than 170,000 borrowers will have their student loan debt erased as part of a years-long class-action battle over about $23 billion in canceled loans.
In the case, filed in 2019, several students applied to the Department of Education for federal student loan relief under the Borrower Defense rule because predatory for-profit schools misled them or defrauded them. Even though the Biden administration reached a settlement in 2022, the Trump administration continued to delay giving the borrowers relief, according to the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which brought the case on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The Education Department's latest attempt to postpone the settlement's schedule of relief for borrowers for 18 months was rejected July
17 by a federal appeals court. That means about $11 billion in loans are set to be forgiven for more than 170,000 borrowers who did not receive timely decisions on their borrower defense applications, Eileen Connor, president and executive director of The Project on Predatory Student Lending, told USA TODAY.
Overall, the case, originally titled Sweet vs. DeVos and the Department of Education, will lead to at least $23 billion in federal student loan relief for about 500,000 people, Connor said.
"In terms of monetary relief provided, Sweet is the largest class-action settlement in American history and the largest settlement ever reached against the federal government," she said. "It is also among the largest settlements of any kind in the U.S."
The recent court decision "made clear that the federal government cannot simply disregard borrowers' rights and its own legal obligations without consequence," Connor said.
What was the student loan class-action suit about?
Nine original plaintiffs, including Theresa Sweet, a California woman who attended Brooks Institute of Photography, sued the Education Department, then headed by Betsy DeVos, alleging that the department had failed to cancel federal student loan debts that met borrower relief status.
In the original 2019 court filing, the borrowers said, "The schools actually delivered worthless products that left students with thousands of dollars in debt, damaged credit, and depleted access to further student aid."
The Education Department in January 2017 began to ignore "the growing pile of borrower defenses, reduced its capacity to decide borrower defenses, and diverted its increasingly limited resources to un-do all of the prior administration’s work," the borrowers argued in the case.While waiting for loan forgiveness to be paid out, many were unable to get employment they hoped they would be eligible for and many couldn't qualify for loans to buy homes or cars, according to the case.
One student told the court her loan total had risen from about $250,000 to more than $400,000 while waiting for her borrowers defense application, accepted in June 2022, to be resolved.
"This case was always about borrowers coming together to stand up for what was right," said Sweet in a July 23 news release. "Through the ups and downs of the last seven years, we became a community united by the belief that what happened to us was wrong, and it became clear just how many people had been harmed by the same broken system.”
The 2022 settlement reached by the Biden administration has already led to $6 billion in federal student loan debt relief for 300,000 students. But the student loan case, which has continued across both Trump administrations, has impacted as many as 500,000 borrowers because a backlog of more than 210,000 grew during the court battle, the PPSL said.
The court's decision to uphold the settlement's deadlines is "an extraordinary consumer protection victory," Connor said. "It forced the federal government to act on roughly half a million long-neglected claims and entitled the overwhelming majority of those borrowers to full settlement relief – including cancellation of debt they should never have owed, corrected credit reports, and, where applicable, refunds of payments they had already made. It also made clear that the federal government cannot simply disregard borrowers' rights and its own legal obligations without consequence."
How do I know if my student loans are affected?
New applicants for borrower relief are not eligible for this settlement. This decision should lead to loan relief for about 170,000 who filed borrower defense applications in 2022.
The Education Department's final deadline to clear borrowers' loan debts is June 15, 2027. Borrowers are not required to make payments as they wait for loan forgiveness to kick in.The average federal student loan balance forgiven under the settlement was more than $48,000, Connor told CNBC. “Individual amounts vary significantly, however, and many borrowers received substantially more or less,” she said.
For more details about the settlement and the relief process, go to The Project on Predatory Student Loans website.Members of the original class of plaintiffs have been waiting for relief for as much as a year and half; the PPSL has sent the Education and Justice departments a formal notice of material breach of the settlement.
Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 170,000 borrowers to see student loan debt erased
