These days, it seems like every time the Education Department makes a new rule about student loans, someone goes to court to try to stop it within days. This trend continued this week, when a group of major unions sued the Trump administration over its latest changes to federal student loan limits, saying the new rules were not only bad policy, but also illegal.
The American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO, National Nurses United, and AFSCME are part of a group that filed the lawsuit. It is about changes that the Education Department made on July 1. As part of these changes, graduate students could only borrow up to $100,000 over the course of their careers, while professional students could only borrow up to $200,000. It was also made clearer which degree programs really qualify as “professional.” Some people say that the real harm comes from that definition.
With the new framework, the higher cap would only apply to 11 programs. A court has already stopped that narrow definition from going into effect, and the department has already put out a list of programs that meet the new requirements. But the unions say that this new list doesn’t include degrees in social work, public health, or education, which are already hard to find and keep workers in. It’s possible that the government sees this as a way to cut costs. But the people who are most affected by it are also the ones that people depend on the most in times of trouble.
Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, made it clear: he thinks the rule could push workers out of jobs that are already thinly staffed. That’s not a very strong claim. If you go to a public hospital or social services office that isn’t getting enough money or staff, you can see that they are short-staffed—not as a number, but as a mood. There is a quiet weariness in these places that numbers can’t fully show.
For its part, the Education Department is not giving up. She said that the department is “confident in its interpretation of the law” and will keep pushing for policies that put students and families ahead of institutions and unions. Ellen Keast is the press secretary for the department. It’s a sharp political move, but it doesn’t address the real issue at hand, which is that making it harder for social workers and public health graduates to get loans isn’t exactly good for families who depend on those services.
This is one of many lawsuits that are being heard by the courts right now. Also, last month, a federal appeals court turned down the Trump administration’s request to delay the forgiveness of more than 170,000 student loans worth $11 billion because the borrowers said their schools lied to them. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of a district court, which means that those loans can be forgiven as part of a class-action settlement in 2022. After missing a deadline, the administration asked for an extra 18 months to look over the remaining claims, but the court said no.
The Project on Predatory Student Lending filed a lawsuit in 2019 that led to this case. It now involves almost 500,000 borrowers and about $23 billion in relief. PPSL’s executive director, Eileen Connor, said it made the financial lives of hundreds of thousands of people a lot better. The Education Department said that the original settlement date was not realistic.
It’s hard not to notice how much of the student loan debate has moved into the courts as this goes on. The system hasn’t been changed in a meaningful way by Congress in years. From time to time, different people are in charge of the executive branch. And borrowers, many of whom are in the middle of their careers and working in public service and wondering if their loan balances will ever be paid off, are only able to see docket numbers instead of repayment progress.
It’s still not clear how the union’s lawsuit will go thru the courts or if it will succeed in the end. In spite of this, the fact that nurses, teachers, and social workers are at the center of this legal battle shows that the policy is no longer far away, but rather very close to home.
