A top teachers union has sued the US Department of Education after it stopped processing applications for affordable repayment plans of student loans last month and disabled the online application for the programs.
The American Federation of Teachers, or AFT – one the country’s largest unions, representing 1.8 million workers – filed a lawsuit alleging the sweeping action violates federal law.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington DC, seeks a court order to restore access to these programs.
Another court order last month shut out borrowers of student loans from participating in four income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, which tie income to student loan payments, designed to keep payments affordable and avoid defaults on loans.
“By effectively freezing the nation’s student loan system, the new administration seems intent on making life harder for working people, including for millions of borrowers who have taken on student debt so they can go to college,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. “The former president tried to fix the system for 45 million Americans, but the new president is breaking it again.”
More than 12 million student loan borrowers rely on income driven repayment plans and more than 1 million borrowers were waiting on their applications to be processed at the time when the stop work order was issued.
The lawsuit says the Department of Education has not indicated when, or if ever, the suspended programs will be revived.
AFT “brings this lawsuit to compel the Department to abide by Congress’s command and provide borrowers with the ability to re-pay their loans through the affordable, income-driven repayment plans to which they are entitled,” says the complaint.
The education department has cited a court ruling over an incoming driven repayment plan introduced under Joe Biden, the Saving on a Valuable Education (Save) plan, in their decision to stop all IDR applications and processing.
In a letter earlier this month to the agency, 25 US senators noted that while the ruling focused on a single IDR plan, “the Department inexplicably and confusingly chose to also suspend access to every other IDR plan”.
