Moving to protect a popular, federal loan forgiveness program for teachers, nurses, first responders, and other public service workers from unconstitutional attacks by the Trump administration, the National Education Association joined a lawsuit on November 3 against the Department of Education.
The lawsuit, whose coalition plaintiffs also include the cities of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Albuquerque, as well as other unions and advocacy organizations, follows the administration’s announcement that it would disqualify some public-service workers from Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Specifically, the Department of Education has said it will deny employees in cities or organizations that engage in activities with a “substantial illegal purpose,” which would be deemed illegal, not by the courts but by the education secretary.
This is an attempt by the Trump-Vance administration to hijack PSLF, says NEA and other plaintiffs, and use the loan-forgiveness program as a tool to “target organizations and jurisdictions whose… political positions on immigration, race, gender, free speech, and public protest” don’t align with President Trump’s.
“Congress created – in a bipartisan fashion – the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to honor that service, not for the Trump administration to hijack for political gain,” said NEA President Becky Pringle. “The new rule imposes harsh and illegal restrictions, makes repayment less affordable, and silences the voices of educators and other beneficiaries of the programs. We refuse to stand by while politicians trap dedicated educators in generations of debt.”
What is PSLF and Why It Matters
A bipartisan Congress created PSLF in 2007, in the last year of President George W. Bush’s presidency. In doing so, Congress made a promise to teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, librarians, social workers, military officers, and others who work in non-profit organizations that are integral to the wellbeing of our communities: Complete 10 years of service to your communities and our nation, and we will forgive the balance of your federal student-loan debt.
By rewriting the PSLF rule to exclude people who, say, provide food to immigrant families or teach on campuses with pro-diversity policies, “the Trump-Vance Administration is telling a generation of dedicated public servants that their work only counts if it aligns with a MAGA political agenda. This betrays the nonpartisan promise of PSLF and the core principles of our nation,” says Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at Protect Borrowers. It’s also an attempt to “weaponize the federal government against its own people,” he said.
As of October 2024, more than 1 million borrowers have had more than $70 billion discharged through the program. These include educators like Iowa’s Jamie Walker-Sallis, who described in 2022 what it was like to get the letter saying she no longer owed almost $100,000.
“When I got the letter in the mail, saying it all had been forgiven, I started crying,” said Walker-Sallis, who taught special education for 25 years and borrowed to pay for a master’s degree that she earned in 2020. Every month, for a decade, she sent $300-$400 to the federal government; after a decade, the principle of her debt hadn’t budged. Without PSLF, she’d likely still be paying today.
Among the people who have received PSLF forgiveness, about 640,000 of them, or nearly half of the total people who have received forgiveness, work in education, a January 2025 working paper from the Department of Education found. Another 410,000 work in the “government sector,” the paper said. Of them, the chief employers are the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force.
