Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress
Hi Interested Public,
Thanks for your patience with me. After some delays, last week’s news is available today. Agencies across the federal government continue to explore their newfound freedom of motion after the Supreme Court lifted injunctions below preventing them from implementing various reductions in force to effectuate Executive Orders issued over the last several months. The Department of Education (which is itself being dramatically reduced) stated publicly that student loan payments made under the new structure created by Congress’ recent reconciliation bill will be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, although it has paused income-based repayment plans for the interim while it works on a new policy for handling loans. Some–but not all–legal services organizations in New York City have settled their differences with management, while the strike action in Boston continues and additional federal defenders move to withhold labor as the service is unable to pay them. In Florida, state and local governments are experimenting with their own DOGE-style reforms.
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
Solidarity,
“The Department of Education said late Friday that payments made under the new Repayment Assistance Plan, which Congress created under the 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill,' will qualify for forgiveness under PSLF.”
“A federal district judge ruled the Trump administration must face claims that it illegally tried to stop funding for counsel for unaccompanied immigrant children, in what is now the administration’s fifth attempt in the courts to block its role in the legal aid.”
“The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating…the New York University School of Law's State Energy & Environmental Impact Center…On Thursday, Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) sent letters to Bethany Davis Noll, the impact center’s executive director, and Patricia Harris, the CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies. Comer raised ethics concerns about the fellowship, which he said "undermines faith" in the American legal system, and demanded the two leaders provide relevant documents and communications.”
“I don’t know if the administration knew how many little guys are out there,” said Michael H. Ansell, a solo practitioner in Morristown, N.J., who earlier this year joined the Pro Bono Litigation Corps, newly launched by Lawyers for Good Government, a legal nonprofit. He answered the nonprofit’s plea for lawyers willing to give at least 20 hours a week to an upcoming case. More than 80 volunteered.”
“Since the 1960s, presidential administrations from both parties have used taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofits to take on social problems and deliver services. A vast and interconnected set of federal grants fund public safety programs, early childhood education, food assistance and refugee resettlement services in every state…An analysis by the Urban Institute provides a sense of the scale and reach of government support for nonprofits.”
“With government dollars now used as leverage, the institutions that have long held civil society together are being quietly dismantled. This piece breaks down the damage, exposes the political intent, and lays out five ways the sector can fight back before it’s too late.”
“About 40% of the roughly 33 million people repaying student loans were enrolled in one of the Education Department's four such repayment plans at the end of 2024…But three of those programs had previously been halted by a court ruling, while forgiveness for the roughly 2 million people enrolled in the fourth — IBR — is now also paused…Because the SAVE plan could count toward loan discharges in the IBR program, the Education Department is now temporarily halting forgiveness for enrollees in that plan. The Education Department said the loan discharges will resume at some point, but didn't provide a timeframe for when that might occur…Borrowers in the federal IBR plan are eligible to have their student loans canceled after making payments for at least 20 years. However, some people eligible for such forgiveness have yet to see their loans canceled. They should continue making those payments, and the Education Department will eventually refund them, according to the agency.”
“But Turner cautioned against the abrupt reversal of the program. After accounting for inflation, the lifetime borrowing limits now placed on graduate students are lower than they were in 2005, she said. Many students may turn to private loans to cover the gap, often at higher interest rates…Sophia Tully, co-president of the Minority Association of Pre-Med Students at Northwestern, said she and her peers have struggled to reconcile with a system that often feels stacked against them. The 21-year-old plans on taking an extra gap year before medical school in an effort to save money.”
Conflicts Over Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
“A diverse group — faith leaders, college students, grandmothers, retired lawyers and professors — has been showing up at immigration courts across the nation to escort immigrants at risk of being detained for deportation by masked ICE officials. They're giving families moral and logistical support, and bearing witness as the people are taken away.”
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress
Hi Interested Public,
Following closely on its order of July 8th lifting lower court injunctions against an array of “reduction in force” plans across the federal bureaucracy, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction preventing the Department of Education from acting on an Executive Order issued last March aimed at “Closing the Department of Education”. The implications of this latest order for student debt and federal employment generally are profound even in a period characterized by seismic shocks. (See “Editor’s Choices”)
In other news, the US Congress (having passed budget reconciliation) is looking forward to FY26; the House of Representative’s approach does not completely defund LSC but does include “dramatic staffing cuts” (per Government Executive). Public defenders in NYC are striking in increasing numbers, the defender strike in Boston is continuing to reveal structural issues, and federal defenders are working without pay after the US courts exhausted their budget; defenders in North Dakota have already stopped work.
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
Solidarity,
“The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration may fire more than half of the Department of Education’s workforce — mass terminations that, in Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s words, are “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” of the entire department.
…Last week, in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the Supreme Court issued a similar decision reinstating a different Trump executive order which called for mass firings. That order required federal agency leaders to come up with aggressive plans to fire agency employees, but did not provide many details on who will be fired.
…Sotomayor [] would have waited for the agencies to release their plans, and then she would have determined whether any of these plans make such deep cuts that they amount to something like an unconstitutional impoundment.
…The McMahon case, by contrast, presented the same issue that Sotomayor anticipated in her AFGE concurrence. Secretary McMahon has already come up with a plan to fire more than half her department’s employees, and that plan was before the Supreme Court. So Sotomayor and her colleagues could determine whether any of these cuts are so deep that they effectively eliminate federal programs mandated by Congress.
Now that this issue was properly before the Court, however, Sotomayor’s Republican colleagues appear to have come out in favor of impoundment.”
“McMahon is expected to move quickly — department lawyers have already previewed the plans in court filings…Among the most important decisions is where to put management of federal student loans, a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting nearly 43 million borrowers…a June court filing indicated the Treasury Department is expected to take over the work.”
“As some federal agencies are moving forward with mass dismissals of employees after receiving the Supreme Court’s blessing to do so, the Trump administration is telling a lower court that some agencies are walking back their planned layoffs.”
“The Trump administration is formally arguing before a federal oversight body that it has unilateral authority to fire many federal employees at any time, seeking to unwind decades of precedent and current federal law.”
“As former General Counsels and Solicitors of federal departments and agencies, we write to ask all lawyers previously employed by the federal government to come to the aid of their former coworkers…The actions of the current administration have led to massive job losses in the federal sector and extraordinary confusion and anxiety among federal employees. These employees need counsel to understand their rights and how best to cope with a very challenging situation. All lawyers formerly employed by the federal government (who maintain an active license in any state) can help provide such counsel.”
“House Republicans proposed cutting funding for the Legal Services Corporation, but aren’t eliminating it completely as President Donald Trump had suggested.”
“[A] 33-year-old attorney who resigned from ICE’s legal department last month…He told me that he saw frustration among ICE attorneys whose cases were dismissed just so officer teams could grab their clients in the hallways for fast-track deportations that pad the stats. Some detainees had complex claims that attorneys have to screen before their initial hearings, to ensure due process. Others with strong asylum cases were likely to end up back in court later anyway. The hallway arrests sent the message that the immigration courts were just a convenient place to handcuff people. Some ICE attorneys “are only waiting until their student loans are forgiven, and then they’re leaving,” he said.”
“Staff at the Bronx Defenders, the Center for Appellate Litigation and the Office of the Appellate Defender join the roughly 400 attorneys and legal staff across four other nonprofit organizations already on the picket line seeking better pay and working conditions, bringing the total number of strikers to more than 700.”
“The Legal Services Corporation focused its Tuesday forum on efforts to expand legal services in Michigan, with a particular emphasis on local housing initiatives including eviction diversion efforts.”
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress
Hi Interested Public,
Apologies for a doorstop of a digest this week, covering this week and the one prior to the July 4 holiday. Let me explain. No, it’s too much. Let me sum up.
In Washington DC, the federal judiciary cleared the way for the Trump Administration to proceed with portions of its agenda hugely significant to public interest law: the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump Administration’s effort to radically reduce and restructure the federal civil service (the State Department seems to be the first agency in line) and D.D.C. determined that the DOJ’s decision to terminate grants to immigration legal service providers is not subject to judicial review. In Congress, the President’s budget reconciliation bill passed, including significant changes to the Department of Education’s student loan programs. In the Executive Branch, the Department of Education completed a multi-day negotiated rulemaking process without reaching consensus with the civil society representatives it had invited and the Trump administration extended its hiring freeze through this October. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the United States, governments are adapting: New York City, Los Angeles, and Massachusetts expanded funding for immigrant legal services and Arizona funded civil legal aid within its state budget for the first time in history. Also at the city level, labor actions; Boston’s public defender strike drags on and NYC public interest lawyers look increasingly ready to start one of their own.
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
Solidarity,
“The Office of Personnel Management sought to soften the importance of essay prompts for federal job applicants after critics warned the test would screen applicants based on how they’d help President Donald Trump’s agenda…OPM notified federal agency heads last week in a written notice that the essay questions outlined in a May 29 memo “must not be used as a means of determining whether the candidate fulfills the qualifications of a position.”…The notice represents a rare reversal on the Trump administration’s push to root out those disloyal to Trump and to cut tens of thousands of jobs from the federal workforce. The new memo was made public by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a worker advocacy group that filed a complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel alleging that the new essay questions amounted to a loyalty test for nonpartisan civil servants.”
“The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury. The order, which lifted a lower court’s ruling that had blocked mass layoffs, was unsigned and did not include a vote count. That is typical in such emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a public dissent.”
“Federal agency leaders still face obstacles to implementing widespread layoffs, and some are even reversing course after the Supreme Court greenlit President Donald Trump‘s order to cut the public workforce.”
“The Merit Systems Protection Board reported that, so far this fiscal year, it has received 11,166 appeals, which is twice its typical workload. A backlog could emerge if a quorum is not restored to the agency to issue final decisions.”
“The memo, viewed by Splinter, changes the official policy surrounding probationary employees, flipping the script on how the end of a probationary period will generally go. If you were a potential employee, well, you might not be now. “If not terminated sooner, the appointment of an employee serving a probationary or trial period terminates [emphasis theirs throughout] before the end of the tour of duty on the last day of his/her probationary or trial period,” the memo states, “unless the appropriate DOC management official certifies that finalizing his/her appointment advances the public interest.“”
“According to multiple sources inside the Environmental Protection Agency, an “upset” Administrator Lee Zeldin has begun retaliating against agency staff who signed a Declaration of Dissent opposing his destructive tenure. This is pretty obviously illegal.”
“The Justice Department convinced a federal district judge to dismiss a lawsuit that challenged President Donald Trump‘s pause on funding for legal orientation service provider contracts to aid immigrants. DOJ’s decision to terminate immigrant assistance programs isn’t subject to judicial review, said Judge Randolph D. Moss of the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Sunday, granting in part the agency’s motion for summary judgment and dismissing the remainder of the suit from a dozen subcontractor groups.”
“In addition to temporary losses of federal funding, immigration nonprofits have also lost some of the pro bono support available to them, as major law firms allegedly have begun to turn down lawsuits challenging the administration’s immigration policies to avoid being targeted themselves…Immigration lawyers are facing increasingly prevalent accusations of illegal activity, such as encouraging their clients to exaggerate or lie about their persecution.”
“A former Bronx prosecutor who served as general counsel for New York City's asylum seeker operations will lead a new municipal office meant to help facilitate pro bono legal assistance[.]”
“Critics say a last-minute push by state lawmakers to shore up nonprofits in the face of looming federal budget cuts may be unconstitutional. The new law creating a unique committee to pass out up to $50 million in extra aid to Hawaiʻi nonprofit organizations this year has triggered a warning letter from a public interest law firm saying the plan would be vulnerable to legal challenges.”
“Critics [] say the changes could hurt students from low-income backgrounds. “There’s a lot of concern there that with these new caps, with the elimination of the grad plus program, these students just won’t have the options that they had to really go get their degrees,” said Sheffey.”
“The Department of Education (ED) began its final day of negotiated rulemaking (Neg Reg) with hopes of reaching a consensus on its proposed rules on changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. ED sent out updated proposed language Tuesday evening, and even provided a newer updated version just minutes into the session's start, but ultimately, consensus eluded the committee…Negotiators Abby Shafroth of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project and Betsy Mayotte of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors argued that while the higher standard was an improvement, it failed to address the core issue: the proposal grants the Secretary the power to adjudicate violations of complex laws (such as immigration or medical regulations) that fall far outside ED’s expertise.”
“Following a muddled consultation process with a panel of experts, the Department of Education is on its way to implementing that new policy, which would target people involved in whatever Secretary of Education Linda McMahon deems to be “illegal activities,” like assisting undocumented immigrants, supporting transgender people, and so-called terrorism (supporting Palestinians). But as the Associated Press points out, the possible wrongdoing is so open-ended that the policy could be used as a tool of retribution against a wide range of people and organizations:”
“With the ink barely dry on monumental trade deals and the 2017 tax cuts now permanently extended, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a pivotal new focus for his department: the nation’s sprawling student loan debt…He was quick to differentiate the upcoming Treasury approach from previous efforts, explicitly rejecting former President Joe Biden’s debt forgiveness strategies. “I do think that just forgiving student debt was unacceptable,” he asserted. Instead, Bessent promised a more nuanced and impactful solution. “I think that there is a firm and humane way to deal with the student debt crisis. And we are going to be focused on that here at Treasury,” he continued. The Secretary highlighted the significant burden student loans place on young Americans, noting that many graduate “post-college with the equivalent of a mortgage.””
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress
Hi Interested Public,
Thanks for your patience. (Last) week was quite eventful–even by the standards of 2025. The news below will bring you up to speed through last weekend–with a couple of exceptions where the information I had collected last week had already been superceded. Major news out of the Supreme Court last week; commentators moved swiftly to unpack what a ruling concerning the availability of “universal” injunctions as a remedy may mean for other Trump Administration policies currently enjoined by federal courts–including policies pertaining to federal reductions in force. Meanwhile, a draft purporting to be a plan to limit the availability of Public Service Loan Forgiveness to workers at certain employers leaked from the Department of Education.
High drama continues in the US Congress, as the Senate debates a budget bill which contemplates major changes to student loans and potentially federal benefits (student loan changes for current borrowers and changes to the structure of federal benefits were taken out by the Senate parliamentarian, when last I checked). At the state level, the Governor of Maryland implemented a hiring freeze, the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services warned it may run out of money, and the Oregon legislature approved a budget plan that included compensation incentives for public defenders to exceed state-imposed caseload limits (and provisions for slashing pay for defenders who don’t carry sufficient caseloads). In civil society, nonprofits work to adapt to ongoing changes to their funding environment, while the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the hiring practices of the University of California.
The Digest will be off on July 4th, and will return with stories from this week and next week on 7/11.
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
Solidarity,
“The Supreme Court on Friday limited individual judges’ capacity to strike down government policy on a nationwide basis, a decision with potentially far-reaching impacts on how federal agencies carry out their work. The high court left in place some carve outs, however, including one that could—at least temporarily—protect a judge’s ruling that is currently blocking the Trump administration from carrying out widespread layoffs…In a footnote of the opinion, however, Barrett added that nothing in the decision “resolves the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action.” District court judges in both the larger RIF injunction and one more specifically tailored to the Education Department relied in part on the APA to support their findings.”
“Loans issued after July 1, 2027, would have fewer options for deferment or cancellation…Limit loans for graduate and professional students and parents; and eliminate graduate and professional PLUS loan program…Limit income-driven repayment options and allow payments made under a new program to count for people who currently use the public service loan forgiveness program.”
“The Education Department is planning to put new limits on which employers can qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, according to a draft proposal obtained by an advocacy group. Any employers who engage in what the department calls “activities that have a substantial illegal purpose” could be kicked out of the program, and any payments that borrowers make while working for them won’t count after their employers are no longer eligible, according to the draft document.” [draft proposal here]
“In draft regulatory text circulated this week by the U.S. Education Department, the agency proposed stripping eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness from organizations engaging in activities that have “a substantial illegal purpose.” Representatives from certain interest groups, including consumer advocates, borrowers and servicers, will debate the plan and its implications for the future of PSLF next week.”
“All provisions affecting the federal workforce in the GOP reconciliation bill have been removed from the Senate’s legislative text, after lawmakers convened over the weekend in an attempt to bring the bill closer to the finish line. As Republicans work to finalize their legislation by a self-imposed July 4 deadline, lawmakers have revised and taken multiple proposals out of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” — including one provision that would have made all newly hired federal employees choose between at-will employment and a 10% increase to their Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) contribution rate.”
“The City’s contract with Stay Housed LA, set to expire June 30, was approved for a five-year, $34 million extension by the City Council in April and signed by Mayor Karen Bass on May 1. However, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto declined to approve the deal last week. A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office said Feldstein Soto views awarding it as a sole-source contract as violating the city’s charter, an issue which was not presented amidst the city council vote earlier this year.”
“Starting next month, nine Indiana counties, including Lawrence County, will participate in a pilot program offering partial state reimbursement for public defender costs in misdemeanor cases.”f
“Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told senators Wednesday that Congress might want to consider permitting greater dischargeability of student loans, questioning whether it is a "wise national policy" to treat such debt differently under the federal bankruptcy laws[.]”
Conflicts Over Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
Get a weekly summary of news items that affect the public service legal community, with an emphasis on funding, job market, law school initiatives, and access-to-justice developments.
