Dunn v. Cardona

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On August 16, 2022, the Department of Education announced that it would approve federal student loan discharges for all Kaplan borrowers identified by the Massachusetts Attorney General in her May 2016 group borrower defense application – the entire putative class in this case. The Department has completed the process of distributing relief to Dunn class members.

About Dunn v. Cardona

  • Together with the National Student Legal Defense Network and the National Consumer Law Center, on April 25, 2022, PPSL filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and the Department of Education on behalf of student loan borrowers with unresolved Borrower Defense to Repayment claims. The lawsuit, filed in the federal District Court of Massachusetts, alleges the Department has for six years ignored its responsibility to issue a decision on a group borrower defense application submitted by the Massachusetts Attorney General (AGO) in May 2016 on behalf of nearly 100 eligible former students of the now-defunct Kaplan Career Institute.

    • April 25, 2022: Plaintiffs’ filed their complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

    • Aug. 16, 2022: Department announces it will provide borrower defense discharges to each of the borrowers identified by the AGO in the Kaplan Group Application

    • Dec. 14, 2022: Case administratively closed by the court

    • Dec. 2023: Department completes process of discharging class member loans

  • This lawsuit builds upon a successful case the PPSL brought against the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos. In that case, Vara v. Cardona (formerly Vara v. DeVos), a court in the District of Massachusetts established that the Department of Education has a legal obligation to act on group borrower defense applications brought by state attorneys general.

    “This six-year failure is unconscionable, given the detailed evidence of misconduct that the AGO provided to the Department,” the lawsuit states. “As this court stated nearly two years ago, ‘the [Department] [is] not free to simply ignore such an application.’ With respect to the Kaplan Group Applications, the Department has done precisely that.”

    Under federal law, defrauded borrowers are eligible for debt relief under the Borrower Defense to Repayment program. The Massachusetts Attorney General submitted evidence of Kaplan’s deceptive and illegal practices — uncovered during a sweeping investigation — with the group application for relief submitted in May 2016. However, the Department has failed to grant any known claims on behalf of former Kaplan students and the Biden Administration has not ruled on a single State AG group claim.

“We have established in court that the Department of Education has a legal obligation to act on group discharges brought by attorneys general. When the Project partnered with Attorney General Healey to force the Department of Education to cancel debts for over 7,000 former Everest students in Massachusetts – and won – we set the precedent for attorneys general across the country to secure debt cancellation for their constituents who are defrauded by predatory schools. It is the Department’s responsibility to do what is right when there is evidence of widespread fraud and abuse and cancel these loans.”

- Eileen Connor, President and Executive Director of PPSL