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On December 1, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed an application by the Biden Administration to vacate an injunction entered by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that currently prevents the administration from enacting its plan to forgive approximately $400 billion in federal student loans.  Justice Kavanagh—the designated Justice for certain emergency appeals from the…

In conjunction with efforts to forgive federal student debt for certain borrowers, President Biden’s Justice Department recently announced new guidance for its attorneys to use when deciding whether to recommend that a bankruptcy judge discharge an individual’s federal student loans. 

The guidance seeks to streamline the process of discharging federal student debt which, unlike other…

On December 22, 2021, New York State Senate Bill 2767A was signed into law. The Bill establishes the Private Student Loan Refinancing Task Force (the “Task Force”), which was charged with “study[ing] and analyz[ing] ways lending institutions that offer non-federal student loans to students of New York institutions of higher education can be incentivized and…

After reviewing the background of the current moratorium on federal student loan payments and the Biden Administration’s decision to grant loan forgiveness, we discuss two recent decisions that have paused the Administration’s ability to proceed with forgiveness.  We first analyze the Texas federal district court decision vacating the forgiveness program, including the court’s standing analysis…

Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted a request to enjoin the Biden Administration’s federal student loan forgiveness program pending resolution of an appeal filed by state attorneys general of six states (Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina), whose challenge to the loan forgiveness plan…

On November 10, 2022, a federal district court in the Northern District of Texas entered judgment in favor of two plaintiffs on an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claim seeking vacatur of the Biden administration’s plan to forgive approximately $400 billion in federal student loans under the HEROES Act of 2003. The court, citing a rarely…

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced final regulations, effective July 1, 2023, designed to expand and improve the major student loan discharge programs authorized by the Higher Education Act.  Among other things, the final regulations prohibit institutions that participate in the Federal Direct Loan program from requiring borrowers to sign mandatory pre-dispute arbitration…

On the evening of Friday, October 21, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit put a halt—albeit a potentially temporary one—to the Biden Administration’s federal student loan forgiveness program, which had been scheduled to result in loan cancellation for at least some student borrowers only two days later, on October 23.…

Last week, the CFPB released its eleventh annual report to Congress on college credit card agreements.  The annual report is mandated by the CARD Act.

The CARD Act requires mandatory reporting to the CFPB by card issuers on agreements with institutions of higher learning or certain affiliated organizations (such as alumni associations).  The new report…

On September 29, 2022, the Attorneys General of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri against President Biden, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and the U.S. Department of Education (4:22-cv-01040) seeking to halt implementation of the Biden Administration’s…