US District Judge Randolph Moss sits on the side of 18 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia who sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after freezing a rule from the Obama era called Borrower Defense. The rule is meant to help students receive a debt relief if they have been deceived by their college.
It was rewritten under the Obama administration as a result of the collapse of Corinthian College, a for-profit school that misled prospective students with too high placement figures. More than 130,000 borrowers have applied for debt cancellation since 2015, the majority of whom have attended for-profit colleges.
"The ruling in federal court is a victory for every family defrauded by a for-profit, predatory school and a total rejection of the agenda of President Trump and Betsy DeVos to deceive students and taxpayers," said the prosecutor. Massachusetts General, Maura Healey.
The rule was to come into effect in July, but DeVos postponed implementation after a group representing for-profit colleges in California sued the Ministry of Education to prevent it from take effect.
A spokesman for DeVos said the department was reviewing the decision.
Moss found the department's argument to delay the rule "defective from the point of view of the procedure" and stated that it was "arbitrary and capricious". In his 57-page opinion, he wrote that some of the department's legal justifications "do not include any meaningful analysis."
But the order does not ask the department to immediately reestablish the rule. Instead, a hearing will be held on Friday to discuss the remedies.
As part of DeVos, the Ministry of Education revised the rule, which is expected to come into effect in July 2019. The new version was rejected by consumer groups who said student borrowers and prove more difficult facts to obtain debt relief.
Department of Education documents show that DeVos' rewrite could allow the government to save $ 12.7 billion over ten years compared to the Obama version.
DeVos is moving away from another Obama era regulation that aimed to prevent funding for for-profit schools and certificate programs that did not prepare students for "paid employment". Together, the two rules played an important role in the Obama administration's crackdown on for-profit colleges.