Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education has delayed implementation of the Borrower Defense Rule three times. This 2016 regulation was designed to help students who have been defrauded by for-profit educational institutions discharge their federal student loans. In our amicus brief to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, we argue that the delays must be vacated because the Department failed to provide a reasoned explanation for any of them. Specifically, the Department repeatedly disregarded harms that delaying the Borrower Defense Rule would impose on student borrowers, even as it touted savings that delay would yield for educational institutions and the federal government. This one-sided treatment of the delays’ economic impacts was arbitrary and capricious.
This brief builds on arguments made in our previous comments and brief on the Borrower Defense Rule.