DeVos Accused of Violating Settlement With Blanket Student Debt Relief Denials – Courthouse News Service
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Student borrowers claim Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is violating the terms of a settlement and her department’s own rules by using “boilerplate language” to issue blanket denials of student debt relief claims.
This past April, DeVos agreed to settle a federal class action claiming the Education Department illegally stopped processing borrower defense claims for students who say they were defrauded by for-profit schools. The Education Department agreed to issue decisions on more than 160,000 borrower defense claims within 18 months.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup preliminarily approved the proposed settlement in May.
On Thursday night, attorneys for student borrowers filed a motion to enforce the terms of the agreement ahead of an Oct. 1 final settlement approval hearing.
As of Aug. 24, the Education Department had denied 94% of the 78,400 final decisions it made on student borrower defense claims under the terms of the preliminary settlement.
According to the plaintiffs, each denial consisted of “boilerplate language” plugged in from a set of predetermined responses, such as “insufficient evidence,” “failure to state a claim under borrower defense regulation” and “other.”