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Saturday, May 22, 2021

Judge: Betsy DeVos Cannot “Quash” Deposition About Her Actions Re: Defrauded Corinthian College Students | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Judge: Betsy DeVos Cannot “Quash” Deposition About Her Actions Re: Defrauded Corinthian College Students | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog
Judge: Betsy DeVos Cannot “Quash” Deposition About Her Actions Re: Defrauded Corinthian College Students



Former US ed sec Betsy DeVos did not want to give a formal, in-person account of her decision to side with defunct, for-profit, California-based Corinthian Colleges by not granting monetary relief to hundreds of thousand of students defrauded by this federal-aid-sucking monster.

However, on May 19, 2021, US District Judge William Alsup refreshingly denied DeVos’ “motion to quash a subpoena for her deposition.”

Alsup’s denial includes the backstory, excerpted here (parenthetical case references omitted for ease of reading; highlights mine):

Former Secretary of the United States Department of Education Elisabeth DeVos moves to quash a subpoena for her deposition, issued in co-pending litigation before the undersigned. Exceptional circumstances warranting the deposition, the motion is DENIED.

Our underlying suit, Sweet v. Cardona, concerns the lawfulness of the Department of Education’s eighteen-month halt in issuing decisions on student-loan borrower-defense applications under Secretary DeVos. Our story began in 1993 when Congress directed the Secretary of Education to specify the sort of school misconduct that borrowers may assert as a defense against repayment of their student loans. This “borrower-defense” apparatus lay dormant for its first several decades until May 2015 when the large for-profit college, Corinthian Colleges, Inc., collapsed. Students submitted a “flood” of borrower-defense applications, so Secretary John B. King appointed a special master in June 2015 to adjudicate claims and then updated the borrower-defense regulations in November 2016. But it remained a game of catch up. By the end of the Obama Administration, the Secretary had approved 31,773 applications and found 245 ineligible, for a 99.2% grant rate. Borrowers, however, had submitted 72,877 applications.

In 2017, newly-installed Secretary DeVos moved to rein in the previous CONTINUE READING: Judge: Betsy DeVos Cannot “Quash” Deposition About Her Actions Re: Defrauded Corinthian College Students | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog