A legal advocacy group for students filed a federal petition urging the agency that oversees the National Health Service Corps to change its rules to address the penalties facing healthcare workers who involuntarily violate contracts they signed to ease their student debt, the Wall Street Journal reported. The National Student Legal Defense Network, a nonprofit founded by former Education Department officials focused on addressing problems in the higher-education system, filed a 71-page petition on Monday, part of a formal process that allows individuals or entities to push a federal agency to change its rules. The group has previously been successful in some efforts to change federal rules on behalf of student borrowers. The network turned its sights on the Service Corps after a Wall Street Journal investigation in February found that job disruptions caused by the pandemic have put more clinicians — who through the Service Corps pledge to work in places with too few medical providers in exchange for help repaying their student loans — in violation of their contracts. That leaves many of them facing penalties many times the amount of aid they received. Among the changes the petition seeks is a rule that would automatically waive the penalties for healthcare workers who were terminated by their clinics through no fault of their own — for example, due to pandemic-related cuts — and who were unable to find a similar replacement within an hour of their home. The program’s penalties are written in law, meaning only Congress can change them. But agencies have leeway in developing regulations on how to implement the law, a process known as rule-making. In the case of the 1987 bill that created the loan repayment program, Congress granted the health secretary authority over how to determine whether someone is eligible for a waiver, which would permanently excuse a participant from their obligations.
