U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon speaks at a roundtable on education held at the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, DC, on Thursday, June 11, 2026.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration on Friday, accusing it of illegally blocking student loan forgiveness for tens of thousands of eligible borrowers.
In their lawsuit, Weingarten v. McMahon, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs allege that U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon mismanaged the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program by miscounting borrowers’ payment deadlines and denying people credit for repayment terms.
PSLF, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows some nonprofits and government employees to cancel their federal student loans after making 120 payments, typically over 10 years. The Biden administration has since adapted the program, making it easier to qualify and paving the way for more than 1 million borrowers to have their loans forgiven under the program.
“Chief McMahon blatantly ignored his responsibility to help teachers, nurses, and first responders,” lead plaintiff AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. Other plaintiffs include AFT members and public officials. AFT is a teachers union representing approximately 1.8 million members.
“This lawsuit asks McMahon to stop stalling and do his job,” Weingarten said.
The lawsuit accuses Trump officials of denying borrower relief under the Biden administration-era PSLF buyback program. This opportunity allows borrowers who have completed 120 months of eligible employment to submit an application to the Department of Education to retroactively pay the missed months due to forbearance or deferral.
Court filings show that 88,000 borrowers were still waiting for decisions as of this spring, as repurchase applications piled up under the Trump administration.
The borrowers who filed the lawsuit also allege that the U.S. Department of Education suddenly and unfairly lowered the number of eligible payments earlier this year and extended the deadline for borrowers to have their student loans forgiven.
“With no explanation, the Department of Education stripped me of the loan forgiveness credit I had earned,” co-plaintiff Elizabeth Shefrin, a New York speech therapist, said in a statement. “Every month this goes on, you end up with another payment you don’t have to make.”
An Education Department spokesperson defended the changes to the PSLF program, saying the department was correcting a “coding error” made by the Biden administration.
“These errors resulted in inaccurate payment numbers for some borrowers,” a spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “The Department remains committed to ensuring that all eligible payments are properly credited to borrowers’ accounts.”
