The Trump administration and Democratic attorneys general will square off in federal court today over the legality of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ delay of the Obama-era gainful employment rule. The regulation, which cuts off federal aid to career college programs whose graduates have high amounts of loan debt relative to their earnings, was finalized by the Obama administration in 2014. But the Democratic state attorneys general argue that the Trump administration has effectively delayed and illegally failed to implement key parts of the regulation while the Education Department takes steps to rewrite the rule.
– The 18 Democratic attorneys general, led by Maryland’s Brian Frosh, sued the Education Department last year over the “gainful employment” rule. They argue that the Trump administration has postponed key consumer disclosure requirements under the rule and has been “egregious” in its delay of finalizing debt-to-earnings metrics that could lead to career college programs losing access to federal aid.
– The Trump administration is in the process of judging colleges’ appeals of their 2015 debt-to-earnings metrics, which the Obama administration published before leaving office. DeVos re-opened and eased the appeals process for some programs, resulting in a flood of new appeals by colleges. The Education Department has, so far, approved all of the appeals submitted by colleges. As of April 25, according to department data, officials had granted 66 appeals while another 186 remained pending. More than 600 programs initially indicated their plans to appeal their data but have since abandoned those efforts, according to the data.
– U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is overseeing the case, will hold a hearing on the Trump administration and the states’ motions for summary judgement in the case today at 10 a.m. at the federal court in D.C.