SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, leading a coalition of 21 attorneys general, have called on the U.S. Department of Education to immediately discharge the student loans of eligible borrowers who attended schools that closed down while they were enrolled mid-program.

Many of those schools were predatory, for-profit colleges.

In the letter, the coalition urges Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to fulfill her obligation under federal law to provide immediate and automatic loan relief to borrowers who attended a school when it closed on or after Nov. 1, 2013, and who did not subsequently re-enroll in an eligible program within three years from the date the school closed.

It is estimated that under federal law, tens of thousands of students nationwide who attended any of the 1,400 schools that closed in 2014 and 2015 are eligible for approximately $400 million in automatic debt relief.

“It’s time for Secretary DeVos to stop dragging her feet and immediately provide relief to the tens of thousands of student loan borrowers eligible for closed-school discharge,” said Attorney General Becerra. “These students, who were pursuing their right to an education, were instead cheated by predatory for-profit schools or had their school close mid-program, and have received virtually zero support from the Department of Education under DeVos’s leadership. These students have waited long enough. The Department of Education needs to get its act together, do its job, and begin supporting the students it swore to protect.”

Students may be eligible for automatic closed-school debt relief if they did not complete the program of study at a school either because the school closed while they were enrolled, or because they withdrew not more than 120 days before the school closed.

For example, when Corinthian Colleges shut down in April 2015, it left approximately 16,000 students displaced. Many of these students are now immediately and automatically eligible to have their federal students loans forgiven and to receive a refund of all repayments amounts, provided they did not enroll in a title IV-eligible program within three years from the date the school closed.

Separate from school closures, students defrauded or cheated by their school may also be eligible for loan relief based on a federal program known as “defense to repayment.” This program gives victimized students the opportunity to have their federal student loans forgiven. When students submit a borrower-defense claim, they can request to have their loans placed in forbearance and to halt collection attempts, even on defaulted loans.

A copy of the letter can be viewed here.