In a piece of recent news, that might shake Donald Trump’s administration as well as the US Education Department, US Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim has ruled Betsy Devos guilty of a student-debt case.
The ruling was passed back in June 2018, when Kim asked Betsy DeVos and the US Education Department to stop collecting debt from the students of Cornithian Colleges Inc., which declared bankruptcy in 2015, after being investigated of fraudulent activities. With this, all the 24 branches of Corinthian colleges were shut. Betsy DeVos, even after the ruling, was still found going after the students who suffered from the bankruptcy declaration.
In a recent court case in San Francisco on Monday, it was found that more than 16,000 former-students have been notified in one way or the other. They were sent multiple notifications that their payments were due.
There are almost 2000 students who are believed to lose their tax returns or wages after the notifications. Sallie Kim was startled with this. She believes that in the best of circumstances, this is huge negligence by the education department and Betsy DeVos. But if this is not the case, then Betsy DeVos has deliberately defied the court orders.
The investigation into the issue and Betsy DeVos
Kim warned that this can be counted as contempt of court. With this, she has issued a warning that she possesses the full ability to send anyone related to the case to jail.
Cornithian Colleges Inc. was alleged of deception and fraud by then California AG Kamala Harris. There were 335,000 students who were associated with these colleges and had student-debts. The federal court ruled to cancel their debts.
But after Trump’s administration and Betsy DeVos took over, all of these students were asked to pay their dues on various occasions by the government. Almost 160,000 mails and letters were sent to the education department for loan forgiveness. The department ignored them completely. In 2017, a class action suit by more than 80,000 former students sued the US education department.
With this, Sallie Kim has ordered to open up the investigation. It is with the consideration that the Betsy DeVos has been in contempt of court
