Quiet Biden student loan forgiveness for 200,000 borrowers gave black eye to colleges
Jeremiah Poff
March 10, 2023
An administrator from a Florida university says the Biden administration unfairly labeled his institution as a malefactor when it negotiated a settlement to discharge student loans in a lawsuit brought by a group of students who said their colleges had misrepresented themselves.
Last summer, the Department of Education announced it was settling the Sweet v. Cardona lawsuit, which had sought a court order to force the department to adjudicate claims made under the Borrower Defense Loan Discharge program, which allows the department to provide loan relief for students who were defrauded by their universities.
The claims in Sweet v. Cardona were exclusively brought against for-profit colleges and colleges that used to be for-profit but have converted to nonprofit status. The suit was initially filed against former Secretary Betsy DeVos during the Trump administration and sought to force the department to act on borrower’s defense claims.
“The Sweet lawsuit basically said, ‘You’ve been sitting on these claims for too long. You owe these students that adjudication of the claims,'” former principal deputy undersecretary of education in the Trump administration Diane Jones told the Washington Examiner. She said that the department under DeVos had developed a methodology for adjudicating the claims, but it was later blocked by a federal court.
