President Donald Trump’s student-loan changes are facing another legal battle.
On Tuesday, a coalition of unions filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education seeking to block Trump’s new student-loan changes, including its narrowed definition of professional degrees. The suit argues that the administration violated administrative procedure in its rule and that it will harm public service professions.
The coalition includes the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Teachers, National Nurses United, and the AFL-CIO.
On July 1, the Education Department rolled out a $100,000 lifetime borrowing cap for graduate students and a $200,000 lifetime cap for professional students. It also proposed a narrower definition of a professional degree, capping the higher cap at 11 programs. A court blocked the narrowed definition from taking effect, and the department put out a revised list of programs that would qualify for the higher cap while the litigation progresses.
However, the new lawsuit said that this interim list still excludes professions like master’s degrees in social work, education, and public health, thus “exacerbating short-staffing crises in many bona fide professions.”
“We are already facing staffing crises in too many public service professions, and this rule threatens to make the situation even more dire,” Lee Saunders, AFSCME’s president, said in a statement. “The court must strike down this illegal rule to protect quality patient care, social services and public health, and ensure that workers aren’t priced out of these critical public service professions.”
Ellen Keast, the department’s press secretary for higher education, said in a statement that the department “is confident in its interpretation of the law and will continue to fight for policies that put students and families—not institutions, unions, or special interests—first and make higher education more affordable.”
This lawsuit joins other legal challenges against the administration’s student-loan changes. Ongoing cases include those challenging the professional degree definition and one seeking to prevent the involuntary transfer of borrowers of the Biden-era SAVE plan.
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