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REPAYE lawsuit stumbles on student-loan data error
Five borrowers' incomes were misrecorded as $0 in a federal database; they face costlier repayment plans as soon as Sept. 29 unless a court pauses transfers.
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The Education Department on Monday corrected a legal filing after five student-loan borrowers said it wrongly listed their incomes as $0. The error originated in the National Student Loan Data Service, the federal database that tracks loans. A 2024 system update removed some older income data, department loan analyst Anthony Lowery said in the corrected declaration. The revised filing followed a dispute in which the borrowers' lawyers flagged the discrepancy.
"I was not aware that NSLDS records a borrower's income as $0 when the system has no data," Lowery said.
The corrected filing came in a lawsuit seeking to restore REPAYE, the income-driven plan that preceded the Biden-era SAVE plan, and to pause the forced transfer of borrowers off SAVE. The lawsuit argues that REPAYE should remain available to borrowers while the department completes the transition. The five borrowers had previously shown the department they earn more than $0, their court filings said. The mistaken $0 designations cut against their case, they argued, because a borrower with no income would already qualify for low payments under an existing plan.