Key Points
- The American Federation of Teachers filed Weingarten v. McMahon on October 30, 2026, as a proposed class action over PSLF Buyback processing delays.
- The suit also targets PSLF payment count reductions that hit borrowers this summer and payments that stopped posting in July.
- Plaintiffs want a court order that forces the Department to cancel loans for every borrower who has met PSLF’s requirements.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and nine borrowers sued the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon on October 30, 2026. Union president Randi Weingarten is the lead plaintiff, suing in her official role.
The complaint (PDF File) was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., as Case No. 1:26-cv-03826. It asks the court to certify three nationwide classes of borrowers pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The core issue is PSLF Buyback, which lets borrowers pay for past months in deferment or forbearance so those months count toward 120 payments. The Department’s buyback rules only allow a request after 120 months of qualifying employment. Most of the named plaintiffs are recovering time from the SAVE forbearance, which doesn’t count for PSLF on its own. Five named plaintiffs have buyback requests that have been pending from seven months to nearly two years.
Our tracking of the PSLF buyback delays put the current wait time at roughly 2 years on average, with the timeline growing, not shrinking. The last time we had a status report from the other AFT lawsuit was back in May 2026, showing a backlog of 88,000 borrowers waiting to be processed.
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Why It Matters
Every month a buyback isn’t processed, these borrowers keep paying on loans they say should already be forgiven. Buyback amounts are based on what a borrower would have paid during those months, which is often less than today’s bill. Ohio nurse Alexander Watts needs 22 buyback months, and the complaint estimates their cost at $8,400 or less. Paying the same number of months at his new rate of about $700 would cost about $14,700.
Speech-language pathologist Elizabeth Schoepflin reached 120 payments in April 2026, then got an August 4 notice removing 14 months from her count. She says her repayment plan and employer never changed during the removed months. That sets her case apart from borrowers who lost months that never qualified in the August corrections. “I kept my end of the deal,” Schoepflin said in a press release.
Chicago psychology professor Carly Baetz is stuck on a different issue. She had 118 qualifying payments on some loans by June 2026, but her July through October payments haven’t posted. Without them, she can’t file her final forgiveness application.
Fellow plaintiff Stephanie Costa can’t file a buyback request for the same reason, since bought months must be the last ones a borrower needs.
What Does The Lawsuit Claim?
The complaint challenges the Department of Education on three separate aspects of PSLF, and each one has its own proposed class. It picks up where the AFT’s amended 2025 complaint left off. That case led to an October 2025 agreement requiring the Department to keep processing buyback requests.
| Proposed Class | Who’s Included | What Plaintiffs Want Ordered |
|---|---|---|
| PSLF Buyback Class | Borrowers who met PSLF’s public service requirement and filed a buyback request that wasn’t processed within 90 days | Timely processing of buyback requests |
| PSLF Clawback Class | Borrowers who lost previously credited months and would have reached 120 payments without the removal | Restored credits and cancellation of qualifying loans |
| Withheld Payments Class | Borrowers whose unposted payments would be their 120th month or would make them eligible for buyback | Credit for all qualifying payments made |
The plaintiffs argue a buyback decision is a ministerial task. The Department only has to confirm which months count toward PSLF and price the missing ones. They also allege requests are processed out of order, with some borrowers approved within a few months.
The legal claims rest on the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. The suit asks for court orders to process eligible borrowers loan forgiveness and attorneys’ fees, not money damages. A certified class would cover borrowers who fit it without any filing on their part.
How Big Is The PSLF Buyback Backlog?
Pending buyback requests nearly doubled from 49,318 in April 2025 to 89,720 in March 2026. Those figures come from the Department’s court-ordered status reports in the AFT’s earlier case.
The latest number on record is 88,000 as of April 30, 2026, and the April report disclosed 18,000 to 19,000 duplicates in that total. April was also the first month when decisions outpaced new requests, which totaled 4,790.
The duplicates change the wait math and little bit. A unique backlog of roughly 69,000 to 70,000 would take about 10 months at April’s record pace of 6,870 decisions. At the 2,430 decisions made in January, it would take more than 28 months. Neither estimate counts new requests, and more borrowers reach 10 years of service each month.
We haven’t had any updates since that report, and so it’s possible that the backlog queue has grown even larger in those months.
What Can Affected Borrowers Do Now?
You don’t need to join the suit to protect your PSLF progress, and deciding whether buyback is worth it starts with your own numbers.
- Document your count. Follow our PSLF checklist and save a screenshot of your payment tracker every month, along with any count notice.
- Check removed months. Months on an Extended or Graduated plan or in non-qualifying forbearance never counted toward PSLF. If the removed months match your other qualifying months, file a PSLF Reconsideration request.
- Run the buyback math. Each regular qualifying payment cuts one month from your buyback, and many borrowers will reach 120 before their request is processed.
- Stay in repayment if you can. You can change repayment plans while a buyback is pending, and the Department says payments past 120 are refunded after forgiveness.
For borrowers still in forbearance and thinking about buyback, the math for current payments likely doesn’t work in their favor. It’s better to be enrolled in repayment plans right now using your prior-year income versus trying to buyback at your current income.
How This Connects
This is the AFT’s third suit against the Department in under two years. Its March 2025 lawsuit over blocked repayment plans produced the backlog reports this complaint relies on. The union’s 2019 case, Weingarten v. DeVos, ended in a 2021 settlement that created the PSLF reconsideration process.
In Congress, a bipartisan bill would count SAVE forbearance months toward PSLF with no buyback required.
What’s Next
The Department has to answer the complaint, and the plaintiffs must win class certification before relief reaches other borrowers.
Watch for the next PSLF Buyback backlog report (if it happens) and whether July through October payments start posting to trackers, which we’ve been expecting now anytime.
Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.