Attorney General Becerra Amends California’s Lawsuit Against Education Secretary DeVos for Withholding Student Loan Debt Relief for Defrauded Corinthian Students

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced today that the California Department of Justice has amended its lawsuit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in response to a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. On June 27, 2018, Judge Sallie Kim dismissed without prejudice California’s lawsuit against DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education for refusing to process debt relief claims submitted by tens of thousands of students who took out federal student loans to attend Corinthian Colleges, Inc. Judge Kim provided 30 days to file an amended complaint.

“We continue to believe that Corinthian students are being wrongly denied critical relief by a Secretary of Education hostile to their plight. That is why we have decided to amend our lawsuit,” said Attorney General Becerra. “We look forward to seeing this case through in court and to fighting vigorously on behalf of our sons and daughters.”

The amended complaint can be found HERE.

BACKGROUND

Attorney General Becerra filed the lawsuit at issue on December 14, 2017. The federal Higher Education Act entitles student loan borrowers to relief if they are defrauded by their schools. More than 50,000 such claims submitted by Corinthian students are pending before the Department of Education, 13,000 from Californians.

Corinthian is a now-defunct, predatory for-profit school that intentionally targeted low-income, vulnerable individuals through deceptive and false advertising that misrepresented job placement rates and school programs, among other egregious misconduct. In 2013, the California Attorney General’s Office led the charge against Corinthian, seeking to put an end to abusive practices that left students with large amounts of debt and without the jobs Corinthian had falsely promised its degrees would provide. The California Attorney General's Office ultimately obtained a $1.1 billion judgment against Corinthian.