Durbin Statement On Appellate Court Ruling Approving $11 Billion In Borrower Defense Claims For Students Defrauded By For-Profit Colleges

Durbin Statement On Appellate Court Ruling Approving $11 Billion In Borrower Defense Claims For Students Defrauded By For-Profit Colleges

The class action lawsuit was originally filed during the first Trump Administration

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today released the following statement after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the U.S. Department of Education must approve $11 billion in borrower defense claims for more than 170,000 students who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges:

"It's no surprise that a President who peddled 'Trump University' as a prestigious institution would side with predatory for-profit colleges while defrauded students drowned in debt.

"Finally-after years of the Trump Administration making excuse after excuse in support of for-profit colleges-this court ruling is delivering justice to the hundreds of thousands of students who were left in the lurch."

The class action lawsuit originated during the first Trump Administration, with thousands of students asserting that the Trump Administration had intentionally and illegally stopped reviewing their borrower defense claims-which allow students who were defrauded by their institution to receive federal student loan discharges. In 2022, the Biden Administration settled the suit by promising to provide automatic relief for students who attended one of more than 150 predatory for-profit colleges. However, the Trump Administration has stalled in reviewing fraud claims for borrowers who applied after the 2022 settlement was reached. Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit did not approve the Trump Administration's request for an extension to review the borrower defense claims. The Trump Administration must now provide relief for the borrower defense claims approved after the Biden Administration settled the suit in 2022.

In total, this is the largest class action settlement in history, with nearly 500,000 borrowers seeing $23 billion in total federal student debt forgiven.

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