One of the largest unions in the United States is to aim at the administration of President Donald Trump to close access to payment plans for affordable student loans, saying that the decision is “effectively breaking” the system.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represents 1.8 million educators throughout the country, filed a lawsuit against the Washington Education Department, DC, hoping to restore programs that have now been closed for three weeks.
The presentation alleges that the Administration stops the application process for all reimbursements based on income (IDR) and ordering student loan administrators that stop all processing violates the federal law.
“AFT demanded the United States Department of Education (ED) for effectively breaking the student loan system, denying the access of borrowers to affordable loans and blocking progress towards the forgiveness of public service loans (PSLF), in violation of the Federal Law,” said the union in a statement on Wednesday.
The protesters meet during a demonstration at the headquarters of the Department of Education, March 14, 2025, in Washington, DC
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The Congress created for the first time the reimbursement plans promoted by federal income in the 1990s to make the loan invoices of the students’ borrowers more affordable and limit the time that students would be in the hook to pay the debt.
As of this year, the Department of Education offered four IDR plans: the Savings Plan in a valuable education plan (savings), the Pay As Your (Paye) payment plan, the income -based payment plan (IBR) and the contingent revenue reimbursement plan (ICR).
All plans are based on the revenue of the borrower, with the forgiveness of student loans of any remaining debt after a fixed reimbursement period of 20 or 25 years.
There are more than 12 million borrowers of student loans registered in IDR plans and more than 1 million borrowers expected their requests to be processed when the Department of Education closed the system three weeks ago, according to the union.
On its website, the Department of Education cites a court order issued by the Federal Court on the saving of a valuable education plan (rescue), which was introduced under the administration of former President Joe Biden, as the reason for the pause in all IDR plans. The agency also says that students can send paper requests to the programs.
However, the Teacher Union says that the decision of the Department of Education to interpret the decision of the 8th Circuit on February 18 “in such a maximalist way” has “wreaked havoc” in the system. The union states in its presentation that paper requests are not currently being processed.
“Student loan borrowers are desperate for help, struggling to keep up with the monthly payments of monthly payments in a sinking economy, all while President Trump plays politics with the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrowing Protection Center, in a statement on Wednesday.
An officer of the Law observes as supporters of the concentration of relief of the debt of student loans against the Supreme Court, since the judges are scheduled to listen to oral arguments in two cases that involve the attempt of President Joe Biden to restore his plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, on February 28, 2023.
Nathan Howard/Reuters, file
“Borrowers have a legal right to payments they can pay and today we demand that these rights be fulfilled by a federal judge,” Pierce added.
The union said in its presentation that the department has not provided any guidance to the borrowers about when their requests will be restored and when they can expect to see their reduced payments.
In a statement to ABC News on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Department of Education said that the federal agency “is working to ensure that these programs conform to the decision of the 8th circuit and anticipates that the reviewed form allows the borrowers to change the reimbursement plans to be available as soon as next week.”
In a letter earlier this month to the agency, 25 American senators requested similarly to clarity, noting that the federal court ruling focused on a single IDR plan, not on the remaining three.
“While the department had the task of implementing a judicial decision to suspend a single IDR plan … the department inexplicably chose and confusing also to suspend access to all other IDR plan,” the senators wrote in the letter.
“The borrowers have trusted many of these plans for decades and this sudden and reckless action means that millions of borrowers have less reimbursement options available and are not sure what to do to administer their debt,” the senators wrote.
Student loan debt remains massive in the United States and dependence on federal support for payments is a reality for millions of borrowers.
According to the presentation of AFT, there are almost 43 million federal borrowers of student loans in the US, with approximately $ 1.62 billion of pending debts.
