Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office is warning Tennesseans with student debt of scammers offering relief that they cannot provide in the wake of the Biden administration’s recent forgiveness of $39 billion in Federal student loans.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would automatically discharge certain qualifying student loans totaling $39 billion for more than 804,000 borrowers.
We are continuing to deliver critical student debt relief to students & families. Today, @usedgov is releasing state-by-state data on the 800k+ borrowers who earned $39 billion in automatic loan relief through fixes to the Income-Driven Repayment plans.https://t.co/tD5KVoFeQc pic.twitter.com/5NAB6lxhQH
— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) July 18, 2023
The qualified borrowers will be informed by the Department of Education that they qualify for forgiveness without further action on their part.
In the meantime, Skrmetti’s office is warning Tennesseans who qualify for the federal loan discharges of scammers who will take advantage of the opportunity to trick borrowers into paying money to cancel their loans.
A total of 16,970 Tennesseans, according to the Department of Education, are approved for the recently-announced federal loan discharge, totaling $867.9 million.
This round of student loan forgiveness comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month to strike down the Biden administration’s proposal to cancel hundreds of billions more in student loan debt.
The Court’s majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, declared that the Biden Education Department had “no authorization for the Secretary’s plan when examined using the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation—let alone ‘clear congressional authorization’ for such a program.”
The Department of Education has approved more than $116 billion in student loan forgiveness for more than 3.4 million borrowers since the beginning of the Biden Administration.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
