On Tuesday, seven borrowers sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education after the agency failed to take action on their applications for relief from student loans.
Under a 1995 law, the Department has authority to forgive the federal debt of students whose colleges defrauded them. The agency, however, has not approved or denied an application for debt relief in a year. More than 180,000 applications for debt relief are sitting at the agency; nearly 10,000 of them were filed more than three years ago.
In 2018, Public Citizen successfully challenged the Department's delay of its "borrower defense" regulation–an updated rule for implementing the law. Since then, however, the Department has mostly refused to act on the applications.
The Washington Post has the story.
