Court Rejects Education Department’s Effort to Delay Borrower Defense Decisions

The Ninth Circuit federal appeals court rejected the Education Department’s latest bid to delay the deadline for deciding tens of thousands of borrower defense cases, ruling the department failed to show that circumstances had changed enough to justify altering the 2022 Sweet v. McMahon settlement. That settlement required the Department to provide either timely decisions or automatic debt relief on borrower defense claims across three borrower groups. The Department had sought an 18-month delay for a final tranche of more than 250,000 applications after completing only about 60,000 by its original deadline. The ruling means the Department must now provide relief to more than 170,000 borrowers, according to the Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represents them. As of April, the Department had already discharged or refunded $12 billion for almost 300,000 borrowers under the settlement, and the court found the agency knew the scope of its obligations years before contesting the deadline, reports Higher Ed Dive.