Press Releases

LOWELL, MA – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, voted to override President Trump’s veto of H.Res. 76, bipartisan legislation that would prevent U.S. Department of Education Secretary Besty DeVos from implementing her Borrower Defense rule. Scheduled to go into effect July 1st, DeVos’s policy would make it extremely difficult for borrowers defrauded by predatory colleges from accessing much needed debt relief.

“Secretary DeVos could not have picked a worse moment to continue her cruel mission to enrich predatory colleges at the expense of their students. Instead of slashing relief for defrauded students, including thousands of veterans whose GI Bill benefits were looted, this Administration should be working with victims to do everything possible to make them whole. President Trump’s decision to support Secretary DeVos’s policy was heartless, and I’m proud to cast my vote to overrule his veto,” said Congresswoman Trahan.

On January 16, 2020, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 76 with bipartisan support to vacate Secretary DeVos’s version of the Borrower Defense rule and revert back to the existing 2016 rule written during the Obama Administration. The Senate passed the resolution in March with 10 Republican Senators supporting it. The President vetoed the bill despite the thousands of defrauded veterans that would stand to benefit from blocking the DeVos rule.

The DeVos Borrower Defense rule makes it more difficult for borrowers who are defrauded by their school or harmed by their school’s closure to receive the relief to which they are entitled, and which Congress intended, under the Higher Education Act. Specifically, the DeVos rule: 

• Cuts $11.1 billion in expected relief to students compared to the 2016 rule, currently in effect, by making it more difficult for borrowers to obtain relief; 
• Increases the burden on defrauded borrowers to gather and submit evidence, often impossible to obtain, to prove their claim including that the school intentionally harmed them; 
• Requires borrowers to apply individually for relief rather than receiving automatic discharges when a group of borrowers has been harmed by widespread fraud or misconduct; 
• Establishes a statute of limitations on claims—expiring 3 years after leaving school—despite the fact that a school’s misconduct often doesn’t become known until many years after students leave or the school closes; 
• Eliminates judgments against a school for misconduct as a sufficient ground for a borrower to receive a discharge; 
• Eliminates prohibition on class action bans and mandatory arbitration clauses from the 2016 rule—practices used, primarily in the for-profit college industry, to prevent students from suing a school for misconduct in court; 
• Eliminates the ability of borrowers whose claims are denied from having them reconsidered with new evidence; 
• Eliminates automatic closed school discharge provision from the 2016 rule for schools that close after July 1, 2020—provision requires automatic discharge of loans for any borrower who has not enrolled in another Title IV program within three years of the school’s closure.

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