Education Department Seeks Emergency Review of PSLF Form After Court Ruling

The U.S. Department of Education on Monday asked the Office of Management and Budget for emergency review of yet another revised Public Service Loan Forgiveness form, saying a federal court decision just before July 1 forced the agency to strip out a new employer attestation it had only recently added. In the [July 13 Federal Register notice], the department said it wants OMB to act by July 14 and that the revised Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Temporary Expanded PSLF certification/application form will remove the attestation “in order to comply with the court order.” (federalregister.gov)

That makes this the department’s second emergency trip to OMB on the same form in less than a month. A [June 18 emergency notice] sought approval for a version updated for July 1 policy changes, including the new employer certification language; [OMB approved that emergency revision on June 26, with change], according to Reginfo. Monday’s notice is effectively a do-over, prompted not by a new act of Congress but by a court loss that landed the day before the employer rule was supposed to take effect. (federalregister.gov)

For colleges, public agencies, hospitals, nonprofits, and borrowers headed into public-service jobs, the practical point is narrow but important: the paperwork is changing again, and fast. The department says borrowers use the form to certify qualifying employment and track progress toward forgiveness, that they are encouraged to file it annually, and that they must file when they reach 120 qualifying months. That means campus HR teams, financial aid administrators, graduate-program advisers, and employee-benefits offices are all likely to field questions even though the underlying statute has not been rewritten this week. (govinfo.gov)

What remains unsettled is administrative timing. The department is asking for emergency action essentially overnight, while the form on Reginfo is still marked under review. In practice, the immediate question for institutions is not whether PSLF still exists, but which version of the form borrowers and employers should trust in the next several days. That uncertainty is a paperwork and counseling problem more than a substantive policy one. (federalregister.gov)

A paperwork reversal, not a new law

PSLF itself is still the same congressional promise at the center of the program: borrowers can receive cancellation after making 120 qualifying payments while working in qualifying public-service employment. The department’s own form instructions say the form is used to count qualifying employment and apply for forgiveness, and a June 30 federal court decision in Massachusetts described the program as the government’s bargain with workers who spend a decade in public service while repaying their loans. (govinfo.gov)

The whiplash started with a Trump administration effort to narrow which employers count. President Donald Trump signed a March 7, 2025 executive order directing the department to revise PSLF so employees of organizations with a “substantial illegal purpose” would not qualify, and the department finalized those regulations on October 31, 2025, with an effective date of July 1, 2026. In its June 18 emergency paperwork filing, the department said that rule required a corresponding change to the PSLF form: an attestation, under penalty of perjury, that the employer had not engaged in any activity with a substantial illegal purpose on or after July 1, 2026. (federalregister.gov)

Then came the court setback. In a June 30 memorandum, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun wrote that he agreed with the challengers and held the department’s “latest PSLF rule is unlawful.” The department’s July 13 notice says that, because a federal judge vacated the rule on June 30, one day before it was to take effect, the agency is now removing the attestation from the form and making no other changes at this time. (coag.gov)

That distinction matters. The department is not announcing a new forgiveness program, a new statute, or a wholesale rewrite of PSLF on July 13. It is trying to unwind a form change that had been built to enforce a rule the court would not let take effect. For practitioners inside colleges and universities, that is the difference between re-explaining the law and simply telling borrowers that a new signature line may disappear before many people ever use it. (govinfo.gov)

The bigger borrower risk is mixed messages after July 1

The form reversal is landing on top of a separate set of student-loan changes that did take effect July 1. In the June 18 notice and in Federal Student Aid partner guidance, the department said the 2025 student-loan law indirectly affects the PSLF collection because it changed the repayment plans that qualify for PSLF. Separately, the department’s May 1 final regulations implemented the new Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP, and the Tiered Standard repayment plan. (federalregister.gov)

That overlap is where the real advising challenge sits for higher education. Federal Student Aid says borrowers seeking PSLF must repay under an income-driven repayment plan, and its RAP guidance says PSLF borrowers can still receive forgiveness after 10 years of qualifying payments. In other words, getting the employer-certification form right is necessary, but it is not enough. A borrower can have clean employment paperwork and still lose time if they misunderstand which repayment track counts. (studentaid.gov)

For public colleges and universities, that means two offices may now be answering two different halves of the same question. HR or payroll staff may be asked to certify employment; financial aid or benefits staff may be asked whether a borrower’s repayment plan still leads to PSLF. The department’s own materials point borrowers to the PSLF Help Tool for eligibility and to servicer and repayment-plan pages for plan selection, a sign that the federal system itself treats these as connected but distinct processes. (studentaid.gov)

The likely second-order effect is more conservative advising. After one emergency approval on June 26, a court decision on June 30, and a second emergency notice on July 13, institutions have every reason to steer borrowers toward official, date-stamped federal guidance instead of local checklists or onboarding slides that could be outdated almost immediately. That is not ideal for borrowers who want simple answers, but it is a rational response to a form that has become entangled with litigation and broader repayment reform at the same time. (reginfo.gov)

What employers and campuses should watch now

The July 13 notice keeps the burden estimates the same as the earlier emergency filing: 913,713 annual responses and 456,857 annual burden hours. It also preserves a normal public comment period through September 11 even as the department asks OMB for emergency processing by July 14. That split-screen process underscores how compressed the operational timeline is: the government wants to use a revised form immediately while still taking comments over the longer term. (federalregister.gov)

For borrowers and employers, the near-term watch points are concrete. First, OMB has to decide whether to clear the stripped-down revision as quickly as the department requested. Second, the updated form has to propagate through the PSLF Help Tool, servicer workflows, and employer certification routines borrowers actually use. Third, institutions will need to keep distinguishing between employer eligibility paperwork and repayment-plan eligibility, because July’s administrative reversal on the form does not erase the broader repayment changes that also started this month. (federalregister.gov)

For now, the clearest takeaway for campus leaders is that the July 13 action is about administration, not a surprise new statute. But because PSLF is one of the few major federal benefits that directly shapes how graduates think about public-service careers, even a form revision can have outsized effects if institutions relay the wrong version at the wrong time. The next development worth watching is whether OMB clears the revised application quickly enough for borrowers and employers to move into the fall cycle with one form, not two competing stories about what PSLF requires. (govinfo.gov)