Lawyers for former Corinthian College students are asking a federal judge in San Francisco to increase the amount of sanctions the Department of Education must pay for violating a court order barring the collection of certain student loan payments, the National Law Journal reported. Lawyers at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates in Oakland and the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School have asked U.S. District Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the Northern District of California to reconsider the $100,000 sanction order she issued in October. In May, Judge Kim issued an order putting a hold on all government collection on loans that were subject to “borrower defense” to repayment, or the contention that borrowers were defrauded by the for-profit school. The judge held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Education Department in contempt and sanctioned them in October for continuing to collect on loans despite her order. In court papers, the plaintiffs’ lawyers contend that records provided by the government at the time of her October ruling were “grossly inaccurate.” They contend that the government’s representations that it had violated the order 16,000 times by seeking to collect from individuals covered by Judge Kim’s injunction was “off by almost 300 percent” and that the government has collected more than $21 million from individuals who are lawfully covered by the injunction since it went into place.
