Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies during a Senate Committee hearing on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Washington. McMahon and the Education Department are trying to delay discharging student loans under a settlement agreement for borrowers who applied for Borrower Defense to Repayment. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
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Thousands of borrowers are expecting to receive formal notices in four weeks that their student loans are getting discharged. But if the Education Department gets its way, those borrowers may have to wait much longer, and in a worst-case scenario, they may not get a student loan discharge at all.
The uncertainty centers on the latest chapter of the Sweet v. McMahon saga, a legal battle that has been ongoing for nearly a decade at this point. In the class action lawsuit that was initially filed during the first Trump administration, hundreds of thousands of federal student loan borrowers argued that the Education Department had unlawfully delayed or denied applications for Borrower Defense to Repayment, a program that allows borrowers to request student loan forgiveness if their school defrauded them by making false promises about central aspects of their program, such as the ability to land a lucrative job or to transfer credits to another educational institution.
