Weingarten v. McMahon: Major Class Action Lawsuit Launched Against Education Secretary Over Student Loan Crisis

WASHINGTON-A landmark class action lawsuit filed today in federal court documents how Education Secretary Linda McMahon systematically prevented tens of thousands of public service workers from securing millions in student debt relief they are owed under federal law.

The nationwide suit, Weingarten v. McMahon, lays bare the gross mismanagement of the buyback and other key provisions of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by McMahon and her Department of Education. Borrowers who have applied for debt relief have had their applications are stuck in limbo, with no updates for months on end.

The case, filed Friday in federal District Court for the District of Columbia, is brought as a class action and is seeking relief for all similarly situated borrowers, not just the named plaintiffs.

"Secretary McMahon has flagrantly ignored her responsibility to help teachers, nurses and first responders under the buyback provision her department is required to honor," said AFT President Randi Weingarten, the lead plaintiff. "This provision was adopted to help people hurt by the first Trump administration's mismanagement of student debt. Instead of processing applications in good faith, McMahon has left 90,000 dedicated public employees in the lurch, forcing them further into debt while their applications just sit there. This lawsuit demands that McMahon stop stalling and do her job-to help, rather than hurt, the people she is sworn to serve."

McMahon has made it her "final mission" to "put herself out of a job" by abolishing the department she runs. She has hobbled its key functions by trying to move them elsewhere, adding to the red tape and bureaucratic dysfunction she claims to want to eliminate.

PSLF is a bipartisan loan forgiveness plan signed into law by President George W. Bush. It enables qualifying public service workers-among them teachers, nurses and first responders-to discharge their student loan balances after 120 monthly repayments.

In recent years, following changes to federal repayment plans and during the COVID-19 pandemic, loan servicers and the department often placed borrowers into forbearance or deferment for several months at a time. Under the buyback provision, borrowers can elect to pay now the amount that they would have paid during those months, have them retroactively credited to their 120-payment total, and then have their remaining debt discharged. This opportunity builds on PSLF account review opportunities negotiated by the AFT as part of a previous legal settlement.

However, by April of this year, the buyback backlog had reached nearly 90,000 applications, from the previous total of 49,000 a year earlier, with the department refusing to give an updated processing timeline. The suit alleges that as a direct result of McMahon's mismanagement, those applications have been shelved, with little or no communication with borrowers about when they might be processed. Because borrowers can only apply for a buyback when they have already worked in public service for 10 years, the department's actions are all that is standing between these borrowers having their outstanding loan balances-often totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars-forgiven through PSLF.

The complaint also details a raft of other PSLF issues, including the department clawing back previously granted PSLF credit: In August, some borrowers saw their PSLF payment counts mysteriously drop, some by 15 months or more. The department initially dismissed the error, then admitted that some earlier waiver and account-adjustment credits were being purposely rolled back. The complaint details how, in addition to the department clawing back PSLF credits, it has withheld, without explanation, recently earned qualifying payments.

"I've dedicated my career to improving the lives of children in my community. I did everything right to earn relief from my student debt," said Elizabeth Schoepflin, a speech-language pathologist, AFT member and co-plaintiff from New York. "Meanwhile, the Department of Education has ripped away the loan forgiveness credit I earned without any explanation. Every month this drags on is another payment I shouldn't have to make. I kept my end of the deal. It's time for the department to keep theirs."

The suit cites repeated violations of the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs are seeking permanent injunctive relief compelling the department to comply with its statutory obligations under the Higher Education Act to forgive the loans of all borrowers who satisfy the PSLF requirements.

"PSLF is not a handout. It is a commitment to people who dedicate their careers to public service," said David Petley, a co-plaintiff and associate AFT member from Oregon. "As a rural Oregon hospital pharmacist, I have seen firsthand how this program helps bring skilled professional public servants to communities that need them. But now, after 10-plus years of public service, I have waited a year and a half for a response to my PSLF buyback request, with no information about when it will be resolved. I am expected to keep making more expensive monthly payments in the meantime. That is unacceptable. Public servants deserve better."

"The teachers, nurses and public service workers of this country deserve the debt relief Congress promised to them, and the AFT will fight to deliver on that promise," said Protect Borrowers Senior Counsel Laura C. Dismore. "The AFT is, once again, stepping up to hold Linda McMahon accountable in court for her blatant defiance of the law. From President Trump on down, this administration is so focused on destroying what's left of the Department of Education-and blaming borrowers for the consequences-that it has lost sight of its basic obligation to the American people: lower costs and fix the economy. Public service workers and the communities they serve deserve better than more dysfunction and broken promises. The law guarantees public service workers certain rights, and we will enforce those rights wherever and whenever they are violated."

Weingarten is the lead named plaintiff, alongside AFT members and public service workers.

"This is our third case in less than two years against the Trump administration, and the AFT will not stop fighting until every teacher, nurse and public worker gets the loan forgiveness they were promised," she said. "People who dedicate their careers to serving the public should be helped by the federal government; instead, McMahon has waged a war on affordability and retied the Gordian knot we forced Betsy DeVos to unravel. That's why we're suing again."

Today's filing marks the AFT's eighth lawsuit over a decade to protect student loan borrowers from predatory loan servicers and politicians determined to make it harder for young people to pay for college. The case is effectively a successor suit to 2019's Weingarten v. DeVos, settled in October 2021, that gave applicants who had been denied a path to re-review through a PSLF reconsideration process that was ultimately codified by the Biden-era Education Department, leading to over 1 million public workers receiving $78 billion in forgiveness. In AFT v. McMahon, filed in March 2025, the union sued after McMahon blocked access to more affordable repayment plans. In November 2025, the AFT joined the National Council of Nonprofits to restore access to PSLF for work that the administration disagreed with politically.

Weingarten v. McMahon seeks to be certified as a class action to represent the interests of borrowers across the country with pending buyback applications, whose PSLF credits have been clawed back, or whose recent payments are not being counted toward PSLF.

All plaintiffs and the proposed class of borrowers are represented by Protect Borrowers and Berger Montague.

A link to the filing can be found here.

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The AFT represents 1.875 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.