Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upsetting thousands of student loan borrowers, the U.S. Department of Education has released state data on the number of borrowers eligible for automatic loan forgiveness, with Florida showing 56,930 borrowers and more than $3 billion in discharges.
Only Texas, with 63,730 borrowers, and California, at 61,890, had more borrowers than Florida.
The debt relief relates to what’s called an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan.
The discharges “are part of the department’s commitment to address historical failures in the administration of the Federal student loan program in which qualifying payments made under IDR plans that should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness were not accurately accounted for.”
Overall, the department has already started to notify 804,000 borrowers about the relief totaling $39 billion.
“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,” according to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
“By fixing past administrative failures, we are ensuring everyone gets the forgiveness they deserve, just as we have done for public servants, students who were cheated by their colleges, and borrowers with permanent disabilities, including veterans. This Administration will not stop fighting to level the playing field in higher education.”
Here’s a state-by-state breakdown of the count of borrowers and the eligible debt relief:
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