Within the first three months of President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has already been hit with several lawsuits. One of the latest comes from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union over access to income-driven repayment (IDR) plans for student loans.
The lawsuit named the U.S. Department of Education and its new leader, Secretary Linda McMahon, as defendants. It was filed in the United States District Court of the District of Columbia shortly before Trump’s Thursday executive order calling for McMahon to close down the Department of Education. At least 21 Democratic attorneys general have also sued the Trump administration over efforts to dismantle the department.
“Last night, the 1.8 million-member AFT sued the United States Department of Education (ED) for effectively breaking the student loan system, denying borrowers’ access to affordable loan payments and blocking progress towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), in violation of federal law,” said a Wednesday press release from the teacher’s union regarding its complaint.
It said that federal education officials eliminated access to income-driven repayment (IDR) plans three weeks ago. These plans were student loan repayment options that allowed millions of borrowers to make affordable loan payments. They are also the only way for public service workers – including teachers, nurses and first responders – to benefit from Public Student Loan Forgiveness, per the ATF.
Now, the application form for the repayment program has been removed from the U.S. Department of Education’s website. According to the AFT, the Trump administration has also secretly ordered student loan servicers to halt all processing of the payments.
“By effectively freezing the nation’s student loan system, the new administration seems intent on making life harder for working people, including for millions of borrowers who have taken on student debt so they can go to college,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “The former president tried to fix the system for 45 million Americans, but the new president is breaking it again.”
Former President Joe Biden – who dropped out of the 2024 presidential election and was replaced by former Vice President Kamala Harris – did try various methods of relieving student debt for Americans. As of this January, his administration had approved student loan relief for more than 5 million people.
After Trump beat Harris in the election, Audacy reported that millions of Americans who had been counting on the Biden administration programs became worried that resources for borrowers would disappear. With the removal of ODR access, the Trump administration is diverging from “the longtime bipartisan consensus around the importance of IDR,” as showcased by bipartisan legislation creating access to IDR plans multiple times since 1992.
These include the 2007 College Cost Reduction and Access Act, signed into law by former President George W. Bush. An IDR option created by that act, the Income-Based Payment – was one of the resources halted by the Trump administration, “when it decided to remove all IDR applications from ED’s website and issue the illegal February 2025 stop-work order,” said the AFT.
“ED claims the decision to remove all IDR applications is responsive to the 8th Circuit’s February 18th decision in the appeal of the preliminary injunction in the case challenging the Saving on a Valuable Education repayment plan (the SAVE plan), one of the IDR plans,” the union said. Even before the administration removed the IDR options, more than 1 million borrowers were in backlog waiting for their application to be processed, it added.
“Student loan borrowers are desperate for help, struggling to keep up with spiking monthly payments in a sinking economy, all while President Trump plays politics with the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), one of the groups representing the plaintiffs. “Borrowers have a legal right to payments they can afford and today we are demanding that these rights are enforced by a federal judge.”