Democratic AGs Object to Delay of Rule

Democratic attorney generals in a court filing Monday objected to the latest delay by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of the Obama era borrower defense rule. 

The Obama administration crafted the rule to clarify and expand on existing language in federal statute allowing student borrowers who were defrauded or misled by their college to have their federal student loans discharged. 

DeVos in June announced she would block implementation of the rule, set for July 1, citing a provision of the Administrative Procedures Act allowing the delay of a regulation pending legal challenge. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia sued in July and asked the courts to compel DeVos to implement the rule.

Earlier this month, she announced a further delay that would suspend the borrower defense rule from going into effect until July 2019. That timeline, the department said, would allow it to complete a bureaucratic rewrite of borrower defense through a negotiated rulemaking process starting this fall. 

The attorneys general argued in the filing Monday that the new delay didn't go through appropriate public comment and that the department used circular argument to justify its latest action.