© 2016 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Dec. 20) – Michelle Quintero-Millan went to law school with the vision of helping those less fortunate. When she graduated in 2012, she faced an obstacle to a life of public service: $320,000 in college and law school debt.
Fortunately, a career counselor at the University of Denver’s law school presented Quintero-Millan with an opportunity: a federal program signed into law in 2007 by President George Bush forgave debt to graduates who commitment to a decade of public service.
Quintero-Millan agreed that the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was perfect for her and she took a low paying job with the American Bar Association providing legal assistance to immigrant children on the Texas border.
In November, Quintero-Millan received a shocking letter from the U.S. Department of Education stating that her work with the ABA’s South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) does not qualify for the federal program.
The government decision means that Quintero-Millan does not get credit for the nearly three years she worked in Harlingen for $47,000 a year – about one-third the compensation she would have received had she chosen to join a large corporate law firm.
As a result, the $340,000 she owed when she left law school has ballooned to $420,000.
On Tuesday, the ABA, the nation’s largest legal organization, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C. challenging the Education Department’s decision to retroactively refuse to honor loan forgiveness commitments and to withdraw its recognition of ProBAR as a qualifying public service employer under the PSLF.
The ABA lawsuit, which includes Quintero-Millan as one of four named plaintiffs, also argues that there are scores of others facing the same dilemma.
The complaint details how the U.S. Department of Education changed the eligibility requirement for work that was clearly “public service” after already approving the work and after individuals made decisions and loan repayments based on those approvals.
“Paying off what can often be substantial student debt while working a public service job is difficult,” said ABA President Linda A. Klein, who is a partner at Baker Donelson in Atlanta.
“The PSLF program promised these dedicated lawyers a chance at financial stability in return for doing public service work,” Klein said. “After following the rules, these people had the rug pulled out from under them. We cannot tolerate these actions of the Department of Education.”
The lawsuit, filed by the law firm Ropes & Gray, argues that “loan forgiveness programs… are critical to the efforts of public service organizations to attract and retain talent.”
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