Georgia’s chief lawyer is lobbying for the student loans of disabled veterans to be automatically discharged.
Attorney General Chris Carr made the announcement ahead of the Memorial Day holiday after joining 50 other Attorneys General in urging the U.S. Department of Education to automatically forgive the student loans of veterans who became totally and permanently disabled in connection with their military service. The letter was addressed to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
“Our veterans made a promise to us when they offered to serve our nation in the armed forces, and we as a nation must keep our promises to them, particularly to those who were injured in the line of duty,” Carr said in a press release. “Our veterans deserve nothing less, and I am proud to join my colleagues in advocating for this important change in the U.S. Department of Education’s student loan forgiveness policies.”
According to the press release issued by Carr’s office, the U.S. Department of Education identified more than 42,000 veterans as eligible for student loan relief due to a service-related total and permanent disability but fewer than 9,000 of those veterans had applied to have their loans discharged by April 2018. Only 25,000 of the 42,000 had student loans in default, however.
The letter, which was led by New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, calls on DOE to develop a process to automatically discharge the student loans of veterans determined by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be eligible for such relief. While the automatic discharge process is in development, the letter proposes, DOE should halt debt collection efforts targeting disabled veterans, and clear their credit reports of any negative reporting related to their student loans.
Under federal law, DOE is required to discharge the federal student loans of veterans determined by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be unemployable (or totally and permanently disabled) due to a service-connected condition. Although DOE currently requires disabled veterans to take affirmative steps to apply for a loan discharge, those steps are not required by law.
The Attorneys’ General note that the federal government has taken some steps to make it easier for eligible veterans to secure student loan relief. According to their letter, however, an automatic discharge process that gives individual veterans an opportunity to opt out for personal reasons “would eliminate unnecessary paperwork burdens and ensure that all eligible disabled veterans can receive a discharge.”
“Proposals for automatic discharges with opt-out rights have bipartisan support in Congress and among leading veterans’ advocacy organizations,” the letter states. The veterans groups supporting such proposals have included: Vietnam Veterans for America, Veterans Education Success, The Retired Enlisted Association, High Ground Advocacy, and Ivy League Veterans Council.
