Court Opinion

ID: 9957725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-05 00:01:01.787436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:34.863569
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-50491        Document: 86-1      Page: 1     Date Filed: 04/04/2024

         United States Court of Appeals
              for the Fifth Circuit                           United States Court of Appeals
                                                                       Fifth Circuit

                              ____________                           FILED
                                                                  April 4, 2024
                                No. 23-50491                    Lyle W. Cayce
                              ____________                           Clerk

Career Colleges and Schools of Texas,

                                                  Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                    versus

United States Department of Education;
Miguel Cardona, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education,
in his official capacity as the Secretary of Education,

                                      Defendants—Appellees.
                ______________________________

                Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Western District of Texas
                          USDC No. 1:23-CV-433
                ______________________________

Before Jones, Duncan, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.
Edith H. Jones, Circuit Judge:
       An association of Texas career colleges and schools challenges the
Department of Education’s new regulations that will significantly facilitate
certain student loan discharges while creating uncertainty, complexity and
potentially huge liability for the association’s members. The Rule overturns
recent regulations issued by the previous Administration and upends thirty
years of regulatory practice. The district court declined to issue a preliminary
injunction against the Rule solely on the basis that the plaintiffs had not
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shown irreparable harm. Not only do we disagree with that finding, but we
assess a strong likelihood that the plaintiffs will succeed on the merits in
demonstrating the Rule’s numerous statutory and regulatory shortcomings.1
Therefore, we REVERSE the district court’s order denying a preliminary
injunction and REMAND with instructions to enjoin and postpone the
effective date of the challenged provisions pending final judgment. Our stay
pending appeal remains in effect until the district court imposes a preliminary
injunction consistent herewith.
                                   I. Background
                                   A. The 2022 Rule
        On November 1, 2022, the Department promulgated a final rule that
revamped various aspects of the federal student loan program, including
provisions governing student loan discharges based on the acts, omissions, or
closures of higher education institutions. See Institutional Eligibility Under
the Higher Education Act of 1965, 87 Fed. Reg. 65,904 (Nov. 1., 2022) (final
rule) (“Rule”).          Appellant Career Colleges and Schools of Texas
(“CCST”), an association of private postsecondary career schools in Texas,
sued the Department and Secretary Miguel Cardona, challenging various
        _____________________
        1
          It is not this court’s prerogative to assess regulatory motives. Compare Vill. of
Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 268 n.18, 97 S. Ct. 555, 565
n.18(1977)(judicial inquiries into legislative or executive motives are ordinarily disfavored)
with Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 588 U.S.___, 139 S. Ct. 2551, 2575–76 (2019)(concluding
that there was a “disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given”
because the agency’s purported reasoning “was more of a distraction” and pretextual).
But given the manifest legal shortcomings of the challenged portions of this Rule, it seems
to be of a piece with the Executive Branch’s larger goal to sidestep, to the greatest extent
possible, the Supreme Court decision holding Presidential student loan discharges illegal
in Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. ___, 143 S. Ct. 2355 (2023). See generally Andrew Gillen,
The State of Student Loan Forgiveness: April 2024, CATO Institute (April 1, 2024, 5:34
PM) (cataloguing various recent programs to forgive or significantly reduce billions in
students’ loan obligations).

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provisions of the rule, including those relating to borrower defenses against
repayment and closed school loan discharges.
                               1. Borrower-Defense Provision
        Under the borrower-defense provision of the Rule, student loan
borrowers can apply to the Department for a full discharge of their student
debt2 when they meet certain criteria. Borrowers with a balance due on their
loans are eligible for full discharge if the Department concludes “by a
preponderance of the evidence that the institution committed an actionable
act or omission and, as a result, the borrower suffered detriment of a nature
and degree warranting” full discharge. 34 C.F.R. § 685.401(b).
        The Rule identifies various categories of “actionable act[s] or
omission[s]” that give rise to borrower discharge claims:

            • A school’s “substantial misrepresentation . . . that
                misled the borrower in connection with the borrower’s
                decision to attend, or to continue attending, the
                institution or the borrower’s decision to take out a
                covered loan,” or a “substantial omission of fact” by
                the school that had the same misleading effect on the
                borrower and was also connected “with the student’s
                decision to attend or continue attending the school, or

        _____________________
        2
          This includes both a defense to repayment of all outstanding loan amounts owed
to the Secretary as well as a reimbursement of all payments previously made on the Direct
Loan or a loan repaid by the Direct Consolidation Loan. 34 C.F.R. § 685.401(a). Under
the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program, eligible students and eligible parents of such
students borrow funds directly from the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate
enrollment at higher education institutions selected by the Secretary.
See 20 U.S.C. § 1087a, et seq. Federal Direct Consolidation Loans allow borrowers to
consolidate multiple federal student loan into one loan with a single monthly payment.
See id. §§ 1087e(a)(2)(C), 1078–3.

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               to take out a covered loan.” 34 C.F.R. § 685.401(b)(1–
               2).3
           • A school’s “fail[ure] to perform its obligations under
               the terms of a contract with the student [if] such
               obligation was undertaken as consideration or in
               exchange for the borrower’s decision to attend, or to
               continue attending, the institution, for the borrower’s
               decision to take out a covered loan, or for funds
               disbursed in connection with a covered loan.”
               Id. § 685.401(b)(3).
           • A school’s “engage[ment] in aggressive or deceptive
               recruitment     conduct        or   tactics   as   defined   in
               [34 C.F.R. §§ 668.500, .501] in connection with the
               borrower’s decision to attend, or continue attending,
               the institution or the borrower’s decision to take out a
               covered loan.” Id. § 685.401(b)(4).
           • A governmental agency’s or the borrower’s (as an
               individual or a member of a class) obtainment of a
               favorable judgment against the school on a state or
               federal law claim for an act or omission related to the
               borrower’s loan or the educational services for which it
               was disbursed. Id. § 685.401(b)(5)(i).
           • The Department’s denial of the school’s Title IV
               recertification or revocation of the school’s program
               participation agreement due to “acts or omissions that
               could give rise to a borrower defense claim,” for
       _____________________
       3
          The standards outlining covered “omissions of fact” and “misrepresentations”
are defined in other parts of the Rule. 34 C.F.R. §§ 668.71–668.75.

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              misrepresentation, omission, aggressive and deceptive
              recruitment tactics, or breach of contract.          Id.
              § 685.401(b)(5)(ii).
       If a borrower’s discharge claim is successful in the administrative
adjudication process established by the Rule (a process discussed at further
length below), then the Department can seek recoupment from the school of
the full amount discharged. Id. § 668.125, 685.409. In these proceedings, the
school bears the burden of proof “to demonstrate that the decision to
discharge the loans was incorrect or inconsistent with law and that the
institution is not liable for the loan amounts discharged or reimbursed.” Id.
§ 668.125(e)(2). Further, the only evidence parties may submit during
recoupment proceedings consists of:
       (i) Materials submitted to the Department during the process
       of adjudicating claims by borrowers relating to alleged acts or
       omissions of the institution, including materials submitted by
       the borrowers, the institution or any third parties;
       (ii) Any material on which the Department relied in
       adjudicating claims by borrowers relating to alleged acts or
       omissions of the institution and provided by the Department to
       the institution; and
       (iii) The institution may submit any other relevant
       documentary evidence that relates to the bases cited by the
       Department in approving the borrower defense claims and
       pursuing recoupment from the institution.
Id. § 668.125(e).
       The Rule also establishes an adjudication process for addressing
borrower discharge claims, which can be brought by borrowers individually
or as members of a group. Id. § 685.402–403. Under the group claims
process, the 2022 Rule establishes “a rebuttable presumption that the act or

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omission giving rise to the borrower defense affected each member of the group
in deciding to attend, or continue attending, the institution, and that such
reliance was reasonable.” Id. § 685.406(b)(2) (emphasis added). Thus, the
Rule presumes damages. Schools are not provided with any discovery or
cross-examination rights in either the borrower-defense or recoupment stage
of the adjudication proceedings established by the Rule despite the fact that
a successful borrower discharge claim would give rise to a presumption of
liability against the schools in subsequent recoupment proceedings. Id.
§§ 668.125(e)(2), 685.405, .406(b)–(c). Nor is there any requirement in the
Rule that the Department official(s) in charge of the borrower defense or
recoupment adjudication proceedings have any legal training.             See id.
§ 685.401(a) (defining “Department official”).
                               2. Closed School Provision
       The Rule also ushers in multiple changes to the closed-school
discharge provision of existing regulations, under which the Department will
either cancel a Direct Loan or pay a federally insured loan on a borrower’s
behalf if the student was unable to complete his or her course of study due to
a school’s shutdown. See id. §§ 685.214 (Direct Loan), 674.33(g) (Federal
Perkins Loan), 682.402(d) (Federal Family Education Loan (“FFEL”)).
       First, the new closed-school discharge provision redefines a location’s
“closure date”:
       [T]he school’s closure date is the earlier of: the date, determined
       by the Secretary, that the school ceased to provide educational
       instruction in programs in which most students at the school were
       enrolled, or a date determined by the Secretary that reflects
       when the school ceased to provide educational instruction for
       all of its students[.]
Id. § 685.214(a)(2)(i) (emphasis added).

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       Second, the Rule’s new closed-school discharge provision
substantially enlarges the scope of automatic discharges by expanding the
types of borrowers who would be eligible for a closed school discharge
without applying to the Department for such relief. Under the 2022 Rule,
borrowers are eligible for an automatic discharge one year after either (1) the
newly defined closure date if the student did not complete a program at
another branch or location of the school or through a teach-out agreement at
another school with the same accreditation and state authorization, or (2) the
student’s last date of attendance at that continuation program if he failed to
complete the program for any reason. Id. § 685.214(c) (emphasis added).
       Third, the Rule’s closed-school discharge provision allows automatic
discharges of all loans disbursed to students who withdrew up to 180 days
before the newly defined “closure date,” regardless of when the loans were
disbursed. Id. § 685.214(d)(1)(i)(B).
       Fourth, the Rule also substantially narrows the class of borrowers
ineligible for a closed school discharge. The 2022 Rule only renders a
borrower ineligible only if he completes a program “at another branch or
location of the school or through a teach-out agreement at another school,
approved by the state’s accrediting agency, and if applicable, the school’s
State authorizing agency.” Id. § 685.214(d)(1)(i)(C). Thus, a student who
completed a comparable but non-identical program, or who transferred
credits outside a formal teach-out agreement approved by state regulators,
would still be eligible for a full discharge under the Rule.

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                      B. Statutory and Regulatory History
         To examine CCST’s arguments properly, it is necessary to begin at
the beginning of the regulatory structure governing federally assisted student
loans.
         The Department asserts its authority to promulgate the challenged
provisions of the Rule under several sections of the Higher Education Act:
20 U.S.C. § 1087(c) (authorizing the Secretary to discharge loans for a
student who “is unable to complete the program in which such student is
enrolled due to the closure of the institution”); 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(h)
(Section 455(h) of the Higher Education Act) (specifying that “the Secretary
shall specify in regulations which acts or omissions of an institution of higher
education a borrower may assert as a defense to repayment of a loan made
under this part”)4; and 20 U.S.C. § 1094(c)(3)(B) (authorizing the Secretary
to impose a civil penalty for an institution that “has engaged in substantial
misrepresentation of the nature of its educational program, its financial
charges, and the employability of its graduates”). 5

         _____________________
         4
         Hereafter, we will refer to this provision as Section 455(h)—consistent with its
enumeration in the Higher Education Act. This provision was originally passed as part of
the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993, Pub. L. 103–66, 107 Stat. 351.
         5 The Department’s statutory authority to discharge loans for students at closed

schools and promulgate borrower defense regulations is distinct from its authority to
“cancel” loan balances for other classes of borrowers. These include borrowers who are
employed full time “in an area of national need,” 20 U.S.C. § 1078-11(a)(2)(B); borrowers
who are employed in a public service job, id. § 1087e(m)(1); and borrowers employed as
teachers, id. § 1087j(b). Concurrently, Congress specified that loans issued under the
FFEL program are eligible for discharge if the student is “unable to complete the program
in which such student is enrolled due to the closure of the institution.” Id. § 1087(c)(1).
The statute also directs the Secretary to “pursue any claims available to such borrower
against the institution and its affiliates and principals” or settle the loan obligation with
those financially responsible for the school. Id. This statutory language is also applicable

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       In 1994, the Department promulgated initial implementing
regulations for borrower-defenses under Section 455(h), which are consistent
with the circumscribed statutory authorization of borrower defenses in
collection proceedings:
       Borrower defenses.
               (1) In any proceeding to collect on a Direct Loan, the
               borrower may assert as a defense against repayment, any
               act or omission of the school attended by the student that
               would give rise to a cause of action against the school under
               applicable State law. These proceedings include, but are
               not limited to, the following:
                       (i) Tax refund offset proceedings under 34 CFR
                       30.33.
                       (ii) Wage garnishment proceedings under
                       section 488A of the Act.
                       (iii) Salary offset proceedings for Federal
                       employees under 34 CFR Part 31.
                       (iv) Credit bureau reporting proceedings under
                       31 U.S.C. 3711(f).
William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, 59 Fed. Reg. 61,664, 61,696
(Dec. 1, 1994) (final rule) (emphasis added). The Clinton Administration’s
subsequent Notice of Interpretation confirmed that the borrower defense
provision of the 1994 Rule “does not provide a private right of action for a
borrower and is not intended to create new Federal rights in this area.”

       _____________________
to Direct Loans because Congress provided that such loans shall have the same “terms,
conditions, and benefits” as FFEL loans. Id. §§ 1087a(b)(2), 1087e(a)(1).

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Office of Postsecondary Education, 60 Fed. Reg. 37,768, 37,769 (July 21,
1995).
         The regulations governing borrower defense claims were “rarely
used” from the 1990s until the mid-2010s. 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,979. In that
era, the Department of Education played a limited role in student lending,
principally by subsidizing and insuring student loans issued by other lenders.
Things changed in 2010. That year, Congress completed the transition from
loan insurance to the Direct Loan program and thus transformed the
Department into the primary issuer of student loans in the United States. See
Health Care and Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. 111-152, §§ 2201-13,
124 Stat. 1029, 1074-81.
         The 2015 collapse of Corinthian Colleges (a proprietary institution)
led to an influx of discharge claims from borrowers. See Student Assistance
General Provisions, 81 Fed. Reg. 75,926, 76,047 (Nov. 1, 2016) (final rule).
In response, the Obama Administration promulgated a new federal standard
governing borrower defense and school closure claims, and it established a
new adjudication regime for addressing borrower-defense claims. Id. at
75,927 (2016 Rule). Following protracted litigation brought by various
borrowers, the Trump Administration promulgated its own version of the
Rule     in   2019.         See    Student       Assistance     General      Provisions,
84 Fed. Reg. 49,788 (Sept. 23, 2019) (final rule).6

         _____________________
         6
          Many provisions of the 1994, 2016, and 2019 Rules still apply depending on the
disbursement date of the loan in question, which means that different borrowers seeking
discharge have different remedies currently available to them. See, e.g., 34 C.F.R.
§ 685.206(c) (borrower defense for repayment of loans first disbursed before July 1, 2017);
id. § 685.206(d) (borrower defense for repayment of loans disbursed after July 1, 2017, and
before July 1, 2020); id. § 685.206(e) (borrower defense for repayment of loans first
disbursed after July 1, 2020, and before July 1, 2023).

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       While several Administrations evolved new regulations addressing
borrower defenses, the Department’s backlog of pending student loan
discharge requests continued to mount. Eventually, in 2022, the Biden
Administration’s Department of Education agreed to a class action
settlement affecting hundreds of thousands of pending borrower discharge
claims.    See Sweet v. Cardona, 641 F. Supp. 3d 814 (N.D. Cal. 2022)
(approving settlement between borrowers and the Biden Administration and
denying objections of intervenor schools); Sweet v. Cardona, 657 F. Supp. 3d
1260 (N.D. Cal. 2023) (denying intervenor schools a stay pending appeal).
CCST asserts that according to a statistical analysis, it is virtually certain that
at least one of its 54 participating schools is among the 4,000 schools (about
65 percent of the 6,200 Title IV participating institutions) that are subject to
the 206,000 borrower defense claims filed between the Sweet settlement’s
execution and its approval.7 See Sweet, 657 F. Supp. 3d at 1265. While the
Sweet settlement agreement requires the Department to apply the 2016
“standard” to those 206,000 claims, CCST argues that the adjudication
procedures promulgated by the 2022 Rule would still apply to those claims,
as those claims are “pending with the Secretary on July 1, 2023.” 34 C.F.R.
§ 685.401(b).     The Department, however, criticizes these estimates as
unfounded “speculation,” because the settlement agreement allegedly
provides both “substantive” and “procedural provisions” relevant to the
settlement of those 206,000 claims.
       The Department’s current version of the Rule, provisions of which
have been briefly described above, became effective July 1, 2023. 87 Fed.
Reg. at 65,904. As implied at the outset of this discussion, the new Rule

       _____________________
       7
          CCST asserts that the probability that at least one of CCST’s 54 participating
schools is among the 4,000 schools with pending claims in the Sweet settlement is about
99.999 percent, or (1-(1-0.645)54).

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dramatically alters the borrower discharge and closed school provisions that
had been promulgated only three years previously. In contrast to the 2019
regulations, the 2022 Rule eliminates the Department’s authority to issue
partial loan discharges in favor of granting full discharge of entire loan
balances. See 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,946. Additionally, under the 2022 Rule,
there is no time limit within which borrowers must file an affirmative
discharge claim so long as they maintain outstanding loans related to
attendance at a school. Id. at 65,935. Indeed, the Department’s final Rule
explicitly rejected a bright-line three-year limitation that was consistent with
the 2019 regulations and proposed by some commentators.                          Id.; see
34 C.F.R. § 685.206(e)(6).8
        The 2022 Rule also worked a sea change in the treatment of closed
school discharges.       First, the 2019 Rule offered a more conventional
definition of “closure date”: “the date that the school ceases to provide
educational instruction in all programs, as determined by the Secretary.”
Id. § 685.214(a)(2)(i) (July 1, 2020). Second, the 2019 Rule authorized
automatic discharges in far more limited circumstances.                   As a result,
borrowers could receive automatic discharges only three years after a
location’s closure date if (1) the student did not “subsequently re-enroll in
any title IV-eligible institution” during those three years, and (2) if the
closure date lay between November 1, 2013 and July 1, 2020. Id. § 685.214(c)
(July 1, 2020). But under the 2022 Rule, borrowers are eligible for an
automatic discharge one year after either (1) the newly defined closure date if
the student did not complete a “program at another branch or location of the

        _____________________
        8
        The 2019 Rule’s three-year limitations period for defensive, but not affirmative,
borrower-defense claims was remanded to the Department, though not vacated, by the
Southern District of New York in N.Y. Legal Assistance Grp. v. DeVos, 527 F. Supp. 3d 593,
602–04 (S.D.N.Y. 2021).

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school or through a teach-out agreement at another school” with the same
accreditation and state authorization, or (2) the student’s last date of
attendance at that continuation program if he failed to complete the program
for any reason. Id. § 685.214(c). Third, the 2019 regulations only authorized
closed school discharges for students who withdrew up to 120 days before the
location’s official closure date and had loans disbursed before July 1, 2020,
or who withdrew up to 180 days before closure for loans disbursed after
July 1, 2020. Id. § 685.214(c)(1)(i)(B), (c)(2)(i)(B) (July 1, 2020). Last, the
2019 Rule rendered a much broader class of borrowers ineligible for a closed
school discharge. In essence, borrowers were ineligible for discharge if they
“complete[d] the[ir] program of study through a teach-out agreement at
another school or by transferring academic credits or hours earned at the
closed school to another school” if their loans were disbursed prior to July 1,
2020. Id. § 685.214(c)(1)(i)(C) (July 1, 2020). For loans disbursed after that
date, borrowers were ineligible to receive a closed school discharge if they
completed the program of study “or a comparable program through a teach-
out at another school or by transferring academic credits or hours earned at
the closed school to another school[.]” Id. § 685.214(c)(2)(i)(C) (July 1,
2020) (emphasis added).
                           C. Procedural History
       CCST attacks the 2022 Rule’s borrower defense provision, including
its adjudication procedures, and the closed school provisions on multiple
grounds, but it does not seek to postpone other provisions of the Rule.
       As to the borrower-defense provision, CCST contends that
Section 455(h) does not authorize the Department to create affirmative
borrower “claims” against the United States or recoupment actions against
schools and that the Rule’s strict liability and full-discharge standards are
unlawful under the Higher Education Act and the APA.              CCST also

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challenges the Department’s newly promulgated adjudication process and
procedures because Congress did not authorize the Department to adjudicate
borrower defense or recoupment claims against schools.
       CCST also charges that the closed school provisions are inconsistent
with the Higher Education Act to the extent they allow a student to obtain a
full loan discharge even if the school closure was not the reason the student
failed to complete its program. See id. § 685.214. CCST also argues that it is
arbitrary and capricious for the Department to equate a student’s withdrawal
any time up to 180 days before its newly defined “closure date” with its being
caused by that closure. See id. § 685.214(a)(2)(i). Last, CCST argues that
the statute is violated by the Rule’s allowing automatic discharges for all
borrowers (1) one year after the closure date if the student does not accept
“a program at another branch or location of the school or through a teach-
out agreement” at another comparable school, or (2) one year after the
student’s last attendance at a continuation program, without in either case
requiring proof that the closure actually caused the students not to complete
their program. See id. § 685.214(c).
       In the district court, CCST sought a preliminary injunction to
postpone the effective date of the challenged portions of the Rule under
Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). 5 U.S.C. § 705.
The district court held a hearing and denied the motion without addressing
CCST’s likelihood of success on the merits because it determined that CCST
had not shown a likelihood of irreparable harm if the Rule were allowed to go
into effect.
       On appeal, this court granted a temporary administrative injunction
limited to CCST and its members, and later approved a motion to postpone
the Rule’s effective date pending appeal without party limitation.

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                              II. Discussion
       This court reviews the denial of a preliminary injunction for abuse of
discretion; underlying legal determinations are reviewed de novo and factual
findings for clear error. Topletz v. Skinner, 7 F.4th 284, 293 (5th Cir. 2021)
(citation omitted). “A district court by definition abuses its discretion when
it makes an error of law.” Def. Distributed v. Bruck, 30 F.4th 414, 427 (5th
Cir. 2022) (quoting Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 100, 116 S. Ct. 2035,
2047 (1996)). In deciding a motion for a preliminary injunction, a court must
consider four factors: (1) a substantial threat of irreparable harm to the
movant absent the injunction, (2) the likelihood of the movant’s ultimate
success on the merits, (3) the balance of harms to the parties, and (4) the
public interest. Rest. L. Ctr. v. U.S. Dep’t of Lab., 66 F.4th 593, 597 (5th Cir.
2023). The “first two factors of the traditional standard are the most
critical.” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 434, 129 S. Ct. 1749, 1761 (2009).
And “[t]here is authority” that “likelihood of success on the merits . . . is the
most important of the preliminary injunction factors.” Mock v. Garland,
75 F.4th 563, 587 n.60 (5th Cir. 2023); see also Tesfamichael v. Gonzales,
411 F.3d 169, 176 (5th Cir. 2005).
       The APA also provides two relevant standards of review. Under
Section 705, “the reviewing court, including the court to which a case may
be taken on appeal . . . , may issue all necessary and appropriate process to
postpone the effective date of an agency action.” 5 U.S.C. § 705. On the
merits, we review final agency actions under Section 706, which allows the
reviewing court to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action . . . found to be
. . . arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in
accordance with law.” Id. § 706(2)(A). “An agency decision” runs afoul of
this provision if it “applies an incorrect legal standard.” Gen. Land Off. v.
United States Dep’t of the Interior, 947 F.3d 309, 320 (5th Cir. 2020) (citing
Koon, 518 U.S. at 100, 116 S. Ct. at 2047).

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                           A. CCST Has Standing
       “A preliminary injunction, like final relief, cannot be requested by a
plaintiff who lacks standing to sue . . . . At the preliminary injunction stage,
the movant must clearly show only that each element of standing is likely to
obtain in the case at hand.” Speech First, Inc. v. Fenves, 979 F.3d 319, 329–30
(5th Cir. 2020), as revised (Oct. 30, 2020). One way CCST can demonstrate
standing is as a representative of its members (“associational standing”). See
Ctr. for Bio. Diversity v. EPA, 937 F.3d 533, 536 (5th Cir. 2019).
“Associational standing is a three-part test: (1) the association’s members
would independently meet the Article III standing requirements; (2) the
interests the association seeks to protect are germane to the purpose of the
organization; and (3) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested
requires participation of individual members.” Id. (quoting Tex. Democratic
Party v. Benkiser, 459 F.3d 582, 587 (5th Cir. 2006)). See also Hunt v. Wash.
State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S. Ct. 2434, 2441 (1977).
An individual member’s standing is determined by the “familiar three-part
test for Article III testing.” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. 48, 65, 138 S. Ct. 1916,
1929 (2018). That member must have “(1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that
is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is
likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Id. (quotation marks
and citation omitted).
       The district court had no trouble determining that CCST satisfied the
requirements of Article III associational standing. Career Colleges & Sch. of
Texas v. United States Dep’t of Educ., No. 1:23-CV-433-RP, 2023 WL
4291992, at *4–*5 (W.D. Tex. June 30, 2023). The Department, curiously,
disagrees, and devotes nearly one third of its argument to insisting that the
plaintiffs lack standing. This contention is more bewildering than persuasive.

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        “An increased regulatory burden typically satisfies the injury in fact
requirement.” Texas v. EEOC, 933 F.3d 433, 446 (5th Cir. 2019) (quoting
Contender Farms, L.L.P. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 779 F.3d 258, 266 (5th Cir.
2015)). Notwithstanding the Department’s view, the challenged provisions
of the Rule impose an immediate increase in regulatory burden on the
plaintiffs, which is neither speculative nor contingent nor dependent on the
independent actions of third parties. The district court correctly found that
CCST had proven through evidence in the record that the Rule broadened
the kinds of actions that can give rise to a borrower defense claim against a
school, and the new Rule requires “at least some degree of preparatory
analysis, staff training, and reviews of existing compliance protocols.”
Career Colleges, 2023 WL 4291992, at *5. These are precisely the types of
concrete injuries that this court has consistently deemed adequate to provide
standing in regulatory challenges. Texas v. EEOC, 933 F.3d at 446.9 CCST
has standing to sue.
                       B. CCST Demonstrated Irreparable Harm
        We move to consider the requirements for a preliminary injunction.
Although the district court correctly determined that CCST showed real
injuries in fact for purposes of Article III standing, it erred in concluding that
CCST failed to show sufficient irreparable harm to justify a preliminary
injunction. The record demonstrates that CCST’s members would face
irreparable harm stemming from the Rule’s borrower defense and school
closure provisions in the absence of preliminary relief delaying the Rule’s
effective date.

        _____________________
        9
          Traceability of the injuries to the Rule and redressability through judicial action,
the other two elements of Art. III standing, are not at issue.

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       The district court characterized CCST’s proof of financial and
reputational injuries as “too remote,” “speculation built upon further
speculation,” and “too conjectural to support preliminary injunctive relief.”
Career Colleges, 2023 WL 4291992, at *6–7. But read in toto, the causal chain
created by the Rule is not conjectural, but is highly integrated. For instance,
borrowers who receive a closed school discharge of their debt must
“cooperate with the Secretary in any judicial or administrative proceeding
brought by the Secretary to recover amounts discharged or to take other
enforcement action with respect to the conduct on which the discharge was
based.” 34 C.F.R. § 685.214(e)(1). Further, after a borrower’s loan has been
discharged because of a school’s alleged actionable act or omission, the
school must bear the burden to prove in recoupment proceedings that “the
decision to discharge the loans was incorrect or inconsistent with the law and
that the institution is not liable for the loan amounts discharged or
reimbursed.” Id. § 668.125(e)(2). Thus, under both the borrower defense
and school closure provisions, a successful claim leads to full discharge of the
borrower’s loans, which leads to actions for recoupment from the schools.
Combining this series of events with the greatly expanded number of claims
and potential claimants, it is clear that the Rule contemplates the imposition
of significant financial charges on CCST and its members.
       Three specific, immediate, and irreparable injuries developed by
CCST’s evidence satisfy the standard for a preliminary injunction. These
include the increased costs of compliance, necessary alterations in operating
procedures, and immediate threats of costly and unlawful adjudications of
liability all inflicted by the Rule’s new provisions.
                    1. Compelled Compliance and Compliance Costs
       The Rule’s new borrower-defense regulations expand the category of
actionable misrepresentations, adopt strict liability, and remove any

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limitations period, leading to heightened compliance costs for CCST’s
member schools. The schools will be required to scale-up and redesign their
defensive recordkeeping dramatically in order to protect against future
borrower defense and recoupment proceedings. Contrary to the district
court’s finding, these harms are far from speculative.
              a. Expanded Recordkeeping Requirements
       This circuit recently held that enhanced recordkeeping requirements
inflict a kind of irreparable harm that warrants the issuance of a preliminary
injunction. Rest. Law Ctr., 66 F.4th at 598–99. The Rule’s broad definitions
of actionable misrepresentations and omissions apply to all communications
between schools and their representatives with current or prospective
students. Under the Rule, schools are liable for “false, erroneous, or
misleading statements” about their “size, location, facilities, equipment, or
institutionally-provided equipment, software technology, books, or
supplies,” the “number, availability, and qualifications, including the
training and experience, of [their] faculty, instructors, and other personnel,”
and whether a former student’s testimonial was unsolicited. 34 C.F.R.
§§ 668.72(e)(1), (f), (h). Consequently, schools must begin to retain records
of virtually every written or oral communication with a student, lest the
Department later deem it actionable in discharge and recoupment
proceedings. See id. §§ 668.71, 668.72, 668.75, 685.401(b)(1)–(2).
       The Rule also imposes strict liability on “aggressive and deceptive
recruitment standards or conduct,” by schools, their representatives, and
contractors. However, its list of such conduct is deliberately non-exhaustive
and specifies no limitations period for enforcement actions by the
Department. Id. §§ 668.500, 668.501. Running afoul of these vague, brand-
new standards that the Department intends to enforce retroactively is
potentially catastrophic for schools, which could lose their Title IV

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certification, their ability to participate in federal student loan programs, and
the majority of their income. See id. § 668.500(b).
       Specific evidence in the record underscores the enormous burdens
imposed by enhanced recordkeeping made necessary for self-preservation
under the Rule. One affidavit was filed by Jeff Arthur, Vice President of
Regulatory Affairs and Chief Information Officer at ECPI University, a
member of CCST. Arthur stated that in anticipation of the Rule’s July 1,
2023 effective date, ECPI “has already taken and continues to undertake
significant efforts to comply with the Rule’s requirements,” including
“[i]mplementing new record-keeping policies” and “[i]mplementing and
dramatically expanding systems that monitor representations made by
hundreds of staff both in recruiting processes and to our tens of thousands of
students, including verbal and digital communications, including engaging in
extensive legal reviews of the monitored content.”               Similarly, ECPI’s
President, Mark Dreyfus, testified that as a result of the Rule, ECPI had to
make “sure that [its employees] are aware of every communication and
know[] that they have to retain this information even for some kind of
inadvertent claim—or statement . . . and these claims from my opinion are
existential because the bar is so much lower and we do have this opportunity
of a group claim.”10
       As Restaurant Law Center holds, it was error to discount these
affidavits and continuing costs for purposes of establishing irreparable harm.
66 F.4th at 600. To the extent that the district court also categorized these
       _____________________
       10
            As CCST notes, the expanded recordkeeping requirements and other
compliance measures that its members must take on in order to avoid liability under the
2022 Rule’s misstatements provisions contrast with the limited recordkeeping and
compliance costs imposed by the 2019 Rule. See 34 C.F.R. § 685.206(e)(3). Under that
Rule, schools were liable only for knowing and reckless misstatements and omissions and
only to the extent the misstatement or omission caused the borrower financial harm. Id.

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descriptions of harms as “nebulous and conclusory,” its analysis also
conflicts with Restaurant Law Center, where the court advised that plaintiffs
need not “convert each allegation of harm into a specific dollar amount.” Id.
Alleged compliance costs need only be “more than de minimis.” Id. (quoting
Louisiana v. Biden, 55 F.4th 1017, 1035 (5th Cir. 2022) and Enter. Int’l. Inc v.
Corporacion Estatal Petrolera Ecuadoriana, 762 F.2d 464, 472 (5th Cir. 1985)).
Moreover, the ongoing costs of preserving and organizing virtually all
communications between CCST’s member institutions and students, which
is amply substantiated and is traceable to the borrower defense provision,
readily satisfy the requirement that irreparable harms be “future or
continuing.” Aransas Project v. Shaw, 775 F.3d 641, 648 (5th Cir. 2014); In re
Stewart, 547 F.3d 553, 557 (5th Cir. 2011).
              b. Expanded Staff Training
       CCST has also provided specific evidence that its members have had
to expend more time and resources to train their staff due to the Rule.
Specifically, ECPI’s President testified that his institution has had to
“significantly ramp[] up” training for its staff by “a magnitude of . . . two to
three times.”     This training, according to ECPI’s Vice President of
Regulatory Affairs, is ongoing for hundreds of ECPI’s employees, including
approximately 60 staff members responsible for compliance, 95 staff
members responsible for assisting students with obtaining Direct Loans, and
100 staff members responsible for new student engagement.
       The Department’s retort, like the district court opinion, is built on a
mischaracterization of the record and relevant precedent. The fact that some
of the compliance costs borne by CCST’s members have already been
realized does not change the fact that some of those costs are ongoing, and as
such, are financially burdensome, irrecoverable and more than de minimis.
For instance, every current and new staff member involved in compliance,

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new student engagement, or loan assistance will require substantially more
training under the 2022 Rule than under the 2019 regulations. Those costs
are ongoing, built on more than just “unfounded fear,” and more than
sufficient to satisfy the irreparable harm standard in this circuit. Louisiana v.
Biden, 55 F.4th at 1034 (quoting Holland Am. Ins. Co. v. Succession of Roy,
777 F.2d 992, 997 (5th Cir. 1985)).
       ECPI’s President also testified that ECPI planned to hire additional
compliance staff following the effective date of the Rule. That is a purely
prospective financial injury of the type this court has previously recognized
as an irreparable harm in the regulatory context. See Rest. L. Ctr., 66 F.4th at
599–600 (holding that the need to hire additional managers constituted an
ongoing irreparable harm).
       The fact that CCST members, including ECPI, already devoted
significant resources to compliance under previous iterations of borrower-
defense regulations does not undermine their ability to obtain a preliminary
injunction to delay the effective date of a new Rule that dramatically increases
their regulatory burden. Parties who have made substantial efforts to comply
with existing regulations and who operate in highly regulated industries do
not face a heightened burden of showing irreparable harm compared to
entities operating in previously unregulated fields and those that have
previously under-resourced their compliance efforts.
               2. Altered Business Operations and Missed Opportunities
       By the Department’s own admission, the closed-school provision of
the Rule “will increase the number of borrowers who receive forgiveness.”
87 Fed. Reg. at 65,962. This, in combination with the Department’s view
that the Higher Education Act requires it to pursue recoupment for discharges
associated with school closures, exposes schools to enormous new liabilities
when they consider straightforward operational decisions about whether to

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                                     No. 23-50491

consolidate campuses or relocate programs—changes that can often benefit
students. Id. at 65,968. Because the new closed-school provision defines a
school closure as the school’s ceasing instruction in programs in which a
majority of a location’s students are enrolled and provide for automatic
discharge, ECPI’s President testified that his institution was unable to
consolidate campuses in Richmond, Virginia, despite student support for
doing so.11 At the same time, the increased financial liability associated with
the Rule’s school-closure and borrower-defense provisions have forced ECPI
to abandon plans to open a location in Dallas. The district court’s decision
to ignore this specific evidence of injury in the record was clear error. So,
too, was its dismissal of CCST’s arguments about altered business operations
and missed opportunities as too speculative or remote to support irreparable
harm. Career Colleges, 2023 WL 4291992, at *7.
                3. Imminent Threats of Costly and Unlawful Adjudications
        The new borrower-defense adjudication process applies to all
applications received or pending with the Secretary on July 1, 2023, and as
such includes the 206,000 applications pending with the Secretary from the
Sweet settlement—which arise from 4,000 different schools. These new
adjudication procedures are most likely substantively and procedurally
unlawful.
        As noted above, CCST’s uncontroverted statistical evidence makes it
virtually certain, to a probability of 99.999%, see fn. 7 supra, that at least one
of its 545 member schools has discharge claims currently pending with the

        _____________________
        11
           Although ECPI’s San Antonio campus is a member of CCST, ECPI is a single
entity and its San Antonio campus is not a legally separate person. Because ECPI’s
interests in this litigation are represented by CCST, we assume without deciding that for
preliminary injunction purposes, an injury suffered by ECPI through any of its campuses
constitutes an injury of a CCST member.

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Department. Thus, at least one of its members will be subjected to the new
adjudication procedures. The Department would dismiss this evidence as
“probabilistic,” and it went unacknowledged by the district court. A simple
records search by the Department would have ascertained whether any of
CCST’s members is in fact caught in the aftermath of the Sweet settlement.
But we conclude that, barring any challenge to the statistical accuracy, CCST
has sufficiently proven at this stage the involvement of one or more members
in upcoming adjudications under the challenged procedures. This evidence
is far more probative than the vague and general assertions by the Sierra Club
in Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 498-501, 129 S.Ct. 1142, 1152-
53 (2009). In Summers, there was no certainty that any of the club members
would actually encounter the challenged foresting activities in hundreds of
national parks managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Id. Here, the settlement
of over 200,000 student claims across 4,000 schools makes it virtually
inevitable that at least one or more CCST members will have to abide by the
new procedures.
       If CCST’s members have “an independent right to adjudication in a
constitutionally proper forum,” Thomas v. Union Carbide Agric. Prod. Co.,
473 U.S. 568, 579–80, 105 S. Ct. 3325, 3332–3333 (1985), then subjecting
them to costly and dubiously authorized administrative adjudications
amounts to irreparable harm. See Texas v. EPA, 829 F.3d 405, 433 (5th Cir.
2016) (“[C]omplying with a regulation later held invalid almost always
produces the irreparable harm of nonrecoverable compliance costs.”)
(quoting Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200, 220–21, 114 S. Ct.
771, 783 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and in the judgment)). “When
determining whether injury is irreparable, it is not so much the magnitude
but the irreparability that counts.” Id. at 433–34 (internal quotation marks
and citation omitted). The Department’s counterarguments dwelling on
notice and opportunity to respond cannot cure defects inherent in the Rule’s

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adjudication procedures, nor do they ameliorate the underlying injury from
the threat of being subjected to such unauthorized procedures.
        Finally, CCST members are likely to face substantial financial costs
associated with unlawful adjudication procedures. The Department itself
posits that defending each group claim will cost each school $17,611.02.12 The
Department argues that CCST has not identified any possible or certainly
impending group claims, but the rub is this: the Secretary has sole discretion
to authorize borrowers to adjudicate their claims on a group basis. See
34 C.F.R. § 685.402.        The Secretary cannot predict away his/her own
discretion, and in any event, any group claims are also subject to unlawful
adjudication procedures.
        The district court erred as a matter of law by ignoring the irreparable
injury CCST’s members will likely suffer from merely being subjected to
such unlawful proceedings.
        In all these respects, CCST has met its burden of showing irreparable
harm from the failure to delay the effective date of the Rule.

        _____________________
        12
          This figure is based on an estimate of 378 hours to “review and respond to the
proposed group claim” with a cost estimate of $46.59 per hour. 87 Fed. Reg. at 66,030–31.
The Department did not provide any estimate for how much each individual claim would
cost to defend, and there is no reason to believe that the costs for responding to an
individual claim would be significantly different. CCST also convincingly argues that this
cost estimate is “wildly low,” as “schools would likely retain counsel, who, in Texas,
charge a median hourly fee of about $300.” State Bar of Texas, 2019 Income and Hourly
Rates                        3,                        available                        at
https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Demographic_
and_Economic_Trends&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=54237 (last
visited April 4, 2024).

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                     C. Likelihood of Success on the Merits
       Although the district court did not examine the remaining factors
required for injunctive relief, they are all based primarily on legal analysis,
and we have no hesitation in concluding that CCST met its burden. The
likelihood of success on the merits “is arguably the most important” of the
remaining equitable factors required for injunctive relief.       Tesfamichael,
411 F.3d at 176. We turn to that factor.
       CCST’s challenges to the merits are posed in three parts, each with
subparts. First, we consider whether the Department lacked authority under
Section 455(h) to promulgate affirmative borrower rights against repayment;
second, whether the Department had authority to adjudicate claims against
lenders; and third, the scope of the new closed-school regulation.
       1. Borrower-Defense Provision
       Section 455(h) of the Higher Education Act authorizes the
Department to promulgate defenses to repayment of student loans as follows:
       (h) Borrower defenses
       Notwithstanding any other provision of State or Federal law,
       the Secretary shall specify in regulations which acts or omissions
       of an institution of higher education a borrower may assert as a
       defense to repayment of a loan made under this part, except that
       in no event may a borrower recover from the Secretary, in any
       action arising from or relating to a loan made under this part, an
       amount in excess of the amount such borrower has repaid on
       such loan.
20 U.S.C. § 1087e(h) (emphasis added). Three aspects of the Rule are within
the purview of this statutory provision. CCST contends that Section 455(h)
does not authorize the Department to define affirmative borrower defense
“claims” against the United States or enable recoupment actions against
schools. CCST also contends that the Rule does not lawfully permit full

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discharge of a student’s loan if a borrower defense under the Rule is
successfully invoked. Third, CCST argues that the Rule’s prohibitions on
“aggressive and deceptive recruitment tactics or conduct” and on
“actionable omissions of information” are too vague to provide regulated
entities with sufficient notice and inflict strict liability.
                  a. “Affirmative” Borrower Claims for Full Discharge
       As outlined more fully above, the 2022 Rule authorizes several types
of affirmative “claims” for full borrower discharge. Very generally, these
include misrepresentations or omissions in connection with loans or the
decision to attend schools; a school’s default in its contracts with the student;
a school’s use of aggressive or deceptive recruitment tactics; the result of an
adverse judgment against a school; and the school’s loss of Title IV
certification based on the above misconduct. To note that these “defenses”
are vague and broad is to understate their implications.
       In deciding whether Section 455(h) authorized the Department to
recognize these affirmative borrower claims, “[w]e start where we always do:
with the text of the statute.” Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, 598 U.S. 69, 74;
143 S. Ct. 665, 671 (2023) (quoting Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374,
381, 141 S. Ct. 1648, 1654 (2021)).               Other sources that are helpful in
determining what Congress meant when it passed Section 455(h) in 199313
include contemporaneous dictionaries, related statutes, and past statements
of the Department. We must also be conscious of separation of powers issues
raised by the Department’s interpretation of the Rule, to the extent it may
run afoul of the constitutional principle that “[o]nly Congress may create
privately enforceable rights, and agencies are empowered only to enforce the
rights Congress creates.” Chamber of Commerce v. Dep’t of Labor, 885 F.3d
       _____________________
       13
            Student Loan Reform Act of 1993, Pub. L. 103–66, 107 Stat. 351.

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360, 384 (5th Cir. 2018). The issue here is whether the Department could
expand “defenses” to repayment of student loans into affirmative “claims”
for relief.
        To begin, the Higher Education Act does not define the word
“defense,” but it has a well-established common law meaning.                 This
“triggers the settled principle of interpretation that, absent other indication,
‘Congress intends to incorporate the well-settled meaning of the common-
law terms it uses.’” Id. at 369–70 (quoting United States v. Castleman,
572 U.S. 157, 162, 134 S. Ct. 1405, 1410 (2014) and Sekhar v. United States,
570 U.S. 729, 732, 133 S. Ct. 2720, 2724 (2013)). See also ANTONIN SCALIA
& BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF
LEGAL TEXTS 320 (2012) (“A statute that uses a common-law term,
without defining it, adopts its common law meaning.”) Dictionaries are aids
in ascertaining the common law meaning of “defense” as used in the statute.
United States v. Hildenbrand, 527 F.3d 466, 476 (5th Cir. 2008). The leading
definition in the contemporaneous edition of BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY
states: “[t]hat which is offered and alleged by the party proceeded against in
an action or suit, as a reason in law or fact why the plaintiff should not recover
or establish what he seeks. That which is put forward to diminish plaintiff’s
cause of action or defeat recovery.”          (6th ed. 1990).     Concurrently,
BALLENTINE’S LAW DICTIONARY defines “defense” as “protection
against attack; a matter pleaded by a defendant in an action either to delay
the action without destroying the cause or right of action or to defeat the
action for all time.” (3d ed. 1969).
        Both dictionary definitions are consistent with the interpretation
proffered by CCST: that Section 455(h) authorizes the Department to set out
regulations governing borrower defenses to repayment after collection
proceedings have been instituted—i.e., when the borrower has stopped
making his or her required payments. It does not authorize the Department

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to draft regulations spelling out affirmative “claims” that borrowers can
assert against schools to avoid their obligations. A “defense” is a reactive
measure, not a proactive basis for a borrower’s suit.
       This reactive definition is also consistent with the language of other
consumer protection statutes, in which Congress routinely distinguishes
between the assertion of claims and defenses. See, e.g., 15 U.S.C. § 1641
(“any person who purchases or is otherwise assigned a mortgage . . . shall be
subject to all claims and defenses with respect to that mortgage . . .”); id.
§ 1666i(b) (“[t]he amount of claims or defenses asserted by the
cardholder . . .”).
       Even more probative is the contrast between other provisions of the
Higher Education Act and Section 455(h)’s relatively modest statutory
language about “defense[s] to repayment.”                Congress, after all,
unambiguously authorized the Department to “cancel” or “discharge”
student debt obligations in limited circumstances.         See, e.g., 20 U.S.C.
§ 1078-11(a)(2)(B) (authorizing the Department to “cancel a qualified loan
amount” for individuals employed full time “in an area of national need”)
(emphasis added); id. § 1087e(m)(1) (stating that the Department “shall
cancel the balance of interest and principal due” for borrowers employed in a
public service job) (emphasis added); id. § 1087j(b) (directing the
Department to “cancel[] the obligation to repay a qualified loan amount” for
teachers) (emphasis added). We construe these comparative provisions as
having distinct meanings, which would be blurred by treating a “defense” to
repayment as a means to “cancel” a student loan.
       The Department, in contrast to CCST and the Department’s amici,
makes no attempt to engage the plain text arguments urged by CCST.
Instead, the Department rests entirely on how the Department has
interpreted the statute over the last three decades. But although an agency’s

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“longstanding     practice. . . in    implementing       the   relevant   statutory
authorities” is relevant to ascertaining the meaning of those relevant
statutory authorities, it cannot be the only evidence used to evaluate an
agency’s power to act under a statute. Biden v. Missouri, 595 U.S. 87, 94,
142 S. Ct. 647, 652 (2022).          To hold otherwise would greenlight the
aggregation of Executive power “through adverse possession by engaging in
a consistent and unchallenged practice over a long period of time.” N.L.R.B.
v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513, 613–14, 134 S. Ct. 2550, 2617 (2014) (Scalia,
J., concurring in judgment). The Department’s near-exclusive reliance on
agency custom is irreconcilable with the judicial obligation to interpret the
statute that Congress actually enacted.
       Regardless, the history of borrower defense regulations is more
favorable to CCST than it is to the Department.                 Before 2016, the
Department authorized borrowers to assert affirmative claims only in very
limited circumstances, and it never previously asserted the broad statutory
authority under Section 455(h) that it now claims it has always possessed.
       Before promulgating the 2016 Rule, the Department had recognized
borrower claims covering fewer than 100 persons between 1998 and 2009.
These involved highly unusual circumstances including unpaid refunds,
litigation settlements, or factual stipulations in judgments that established a
defense.14 In the 2019 Rule, while acknowledging these outliers from before
2015, the Department explained that its “interpretation of the existing
regulation has been that it was meant to serve primarily as a means for a borrower
to assert a defense to repayment during the course of a collection proceeding.”
84 Fed. Reg. at 49,796 (emphasis added). This admission is consistent with
       _____________________
       14
          See Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of
Harvard Law School, Comment Letter on Proposed Rule (Aug. 2, 2018), available at
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/ED-2018-OPE-0027-0011 (attachments).

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the Department’s longstanding positions expressed in the 1994 Rule and
1995 Notice of Interpretation. In the 1994 Rule15, the Department outlined
four non-exclusive types of “proceedings” in which borrowers could “assert
as a defense against repayment, any act or omission of the school attended by
the student that would give rise to a cause of action against the school under
applicable State law.” 59 Fed. Reg. at 61,696. In 1995, the Department
clarified that this reference to a “a cause of action under applicable State
law” was of “limited scope,” as “[t]he regulation does not provide a private
right of action for a borrower and is not intended to create new Federal rights
in this area.” 60 Fed. Reg. at 37,769. The Notice of Interpretation included
other limiting language, stating that any such state law cause of action must
“directly relate[] to the loan or to the school’s provision of educational
services for which the loan was provided.” Id.
       The Department and its amici seek to turn this limited assertion of
authority in the 1990s into a justification for the far-reaching scope of the
2022 Rule. That argument fails. The 1994 Rule confined the recognition of
       _____________________
       15
            The full text of the relevant provision states:
       Borrower defenses.
                  (1) In any proceeding to collect on a Direct Loan, the borrower
                  may assert as a defense against repayment, any act or omission of
                  the school attended by the student that would give rise to a cause
                  of action against the school under applicable State law. These
                  proceedings include, but are not limited to, the following:
                           (i) Tax refund offset proceedings under 34 CFR 30.33.
                           (ii) Wage garnishment proceedings under section 488A of
                           the Act.
                           (iii) Salary offset proceedings for Federal employees
                           under 34 CFR Part 31.
                           (iv) Credit bureau reporting proceedings under 31 U.S.C.
                           3711(f).

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borrower defenses to the four delineated “proceedings,” and in all of them,
the student would be in a reactive or defensive posture. Tax refund offset
proceedings under Section 30.33 of Title 34 of the Code of Federal
Regulations are only initiated after a debt is past due. 34 C.F.R. § 30.33(b)(1).
Wage garnishment proceedings under Section 488A of the Higher Education
Act can only be initiated against an individual “if he or she is not currently
making required repayment.”           20 U.S.C. § 1095a(a).       Salary offset
proceedings against federal employees can only be initiated after the
Secretary sends written notice to the debtor demanding repayment in a pre-
offset notice. 34 C.F.R. § 31.3. Although credit bureau proceedings could be
commenced pre-default, there is no indication that this possibility was
contemplated in the 1994 Rule. Ultimately, because “words grouped in a list
should be given related meanings,” the 1994 Rule clearly assumed that
borrower defenses would only be invoked post-default; any pre-default
proceedings, if they occurred, would be extremely rare. Third Nat’l Bank in
Nashville v. Impac Ltd., 432 U.S. 312, 322, 97 S. Ct. 2307, 2313 (1977).
       For these reasons, the promulgation of broad affirmative defenses to
repayment in the Rule likely violate Section 455(h).
       b. Full Discharge of Outstanding Loan
       In connection with the broadened affirmative borrower claims, the
Rule’s authorization of full discharge also likely violates Section 455(h). In
providing that borrowers may assert their “defenses . . . in any action arising
from or relating to a loan,” the statute implies a causal connection between
the school’s actionable misconduct and the loans to be discharged. Yet the
Rule allows borrowers to receive full discharge of their consolidated loans if
their discharge claims have been successfully adjudicated. 87 Fed. Reg. at
65,916.   This would allow the Department to discharge loans without
requiring the borrower to show causation. The Rule thus opens the door for

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a student to receive discharge for all four years of loans if he can show that
injury by a school’s misrepresentation or omission committed during his
fourth year. In fact, because the Rule does not provide for partial discharges,
a full discharge would be the only remedy available under the Rule.
       The Department does not dispute that the Rule allows borrowers to
consolidate all preexisting debt when obtaining a full discharge. Instead, it
merely recites the Rule’s purported requirement of a causal link between the
new affirmative claims and remedial discharge. The Department ignores,
however, that loan consolidation often will eliminate the need to show a
causal link between the entirety of the debt and a discrete misrepresentation
or omission that occurred at a discrete time during the student’s enrollment.
See 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,920, 65,922. By allowing students to discharge loans
that were disbursed before an actionable act or omission by a school, the Rule
confers on students substantially greater benefits than necessary to
compensate for any injuries. The combination of full discharge with the
absence of a causation requirement essentially constitutes a punitive damage
remedy arising from the borrower-defense provision. There is no basis for
such outsize compensation under Section 455(h).
       In the end, the Rule’s transformation of borrower defenses into
affirmative borrower claims raises separation of powers concerns because it
establishes new federal causes of action without clear congressional
authorization. “[I]t is most certainly incorrect to say that language in a
regulation can conjure up a private cause of action that has not been
authorized by Congress. Agencies may play the sorcerer’s apprentice but not
the sorcerer himself.” Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 291, 121 S. Ct.
1511, 1522 (2001). See also Chamber of Commerce, 885 F.3d at 384 (“Only
Congress may create privately enforceable rights, and agencies are
empowered only to enforce the rights Congress creates.”)              After all,
“[a]gencies have only those powers given to them by Congress and enabling

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legislation is generally not an open book to which the agency may add pages
and change the plot line.” West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697, 723, 142 S. Ct.
2587, 2609 (2022) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). By
transforming defenses that may be asserted against student loan repayment
into affirmative claims, and enabling full discharges and consolidated loan
discharges that expand into a damages remedy, the Rule likely violates the
limits placed on the Department in Section 455(h).
                c. Insufficiently Specific Strict Liability Standards
        Even if the creation of new affirmative borrower-defense claims
survives scrutiny when tested against the statute, another problem arises
from the Rule’s language articulating those claims. Section 455(h) requires
the Department to “specify in regulations which acts or omissions an
institution of higher education” can be asserted as borrower defenses to
repayment.      See 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(h).             The verb “specify” connotes
specificity, which means a precise definition of the prohibited acts or
omissions. Specify, WEBSTER’S NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY
2187 (3d ed. 1981) (“to mention or name in a specific or explicit manner: tell
or state precisely or in detail . . . ”).16
        The Rule’s extremely broad definitions of actionable acts or omissions
are deliberately nonspecific. The definitional defects are magnified because
the Rule affixes strict liability on schools for undefined misconduct. As a
result, CCST contends that these standards are contrary to law and arbitrary

        _____________________
        16
                See      also       Cambridge         Dictionary,      available     at
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/specify (“to explain or describe
something clearly and exactly”); Oxford English Dictionary, available at
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/specify_v?tab=meaning_and_use#21658843             (“to
mention, speak of, or name (something) definitely or explicitly; to set down or state
categorically or particularly; to relate in detail”).

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and capricious in violation of the APA. CCST is likely to succeed on the
merits of its contentions.
        The Rule defines actionable conduct as misrepresentations or
omissions by any employee, representative or contractor of a school “in
connection with the borrower’s decision to attend, or continuing to
attend . . . [or] to take out a covered loan.” 34 C.F.R. §§ 668.71, 668.75,
685.401(b)(1),(2).          Potential liability runs the gamut of a student’s
interactions with the school, as it includes “but [is] not limited to”
misrepresentations or omissions concerning educational programming,
financial charges and assistance, and the employability of graduates. Id.
§§ 668.72–668.74. Especially glaring are the prohibitions on “aggressive and
deceptive recruitment tactics or conduct.” 34 C.F.R. § 668.501. These
prohibitions also “include but are not limited to” six enumerated categories
of tactics or conduct,” with many of the key terms left undefined. 17 For

        _____________________
        17
             The full text of 34 C.F.R. § 668.501 states:
(a) Aggressive and deceptive recruitment tactics or conduct include but are not limited to
actions by the institution, any of its representatives, or any institution, organization, or
person with whom the institution has an agreement to provide educational programs,
marketing, recruitment, or lead generation that:
        (1) Demand or pressure the student or prospective student to make enrollment or
        loan-related decisions immediately, including falsely claiming that the student or
        prospective student would lose their opportunity to attend;
        (2) Take unreasonable advantage of a student’s or prospective student’s lack of
        knowledge about, or experience with, postsecondary institutions, postsecondary
        programs, or financial aid to pressure the student into enrollment or borrowing
        funds to attend the institution;
        (3) Discourage the student or prospective student from consulting an adviser, a
        family member, or other resource or individual prior to making enrollment or loan-
        related decisions;
        (4) Obtain the student’s or prospective student’s contact information through
        websites or other means that:

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instance, a school may not “take unreasonable advantage of a student’s or
prospective student’s lack of knowledge about, or experience with,
postsecondary institutions, postsecondary programs, or financial aid to
pressure the student into enrollment or borrowing funds to attend the
institution.” Id. § 668.501(2) (emphasis added). But there is no definition
of what amounts to an “unreasonable advantage.” The same goes for the
Rule’s prohibition on “us[ing] threatening or abusive language or behavior
toward the student or prospective student,” which does not define the key
terms. Id. § 668.501(5) (emphasis added).
       We hold that the Rule’s standards for actionable misrepresentations
or omissions or aggressive or deceptive recruiting tactics most likely do not
comply with the specificity requirement of Section 455(h). The statute does
not permit the Department to promulgate vague standards full of non-
exclusive examples and undefined terms. The unbridled scope of these
prohibitions enables the Department to hold schools liable for conduct that it
defines only with future “guidance” documents or in the course of
adjudication. Simply put, the statute does not permit the Department to
terrify first and clarify later. The vagueness of the Rule’s liability standards
is contrary to Section 455(h) and thus likely violates the APA.

       _____________________
              (i) Falsely offer assistance to individuals seeking Federal, state or local
              benefits;
              (ii) Falsely advertise employment opportunities; or,
              (iii) Present false rankings of the institution or its programs;
       (5) Use threatening or abusive language or behavior toward the student or
       prospective student; or,
       (6) Repeatedly engage in unsolicited contact for the purpose of enrolling or
       reenrolling after the student or prospective student has requested not to be
       contacted further.

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       Further exacerbating the consequences of vague liability standards
based on a promiscuously broad definition of covered personnel is the
absence of any requirement of scienter or even negligence associated with the
newly actionable violations. The Department acknowledges that “this rule
removes the requirement that [it] conclude that the act or omission was made
with knowledge of its false, misleading or deceptive nature, or with reckless
disregard for the truth.” See 87 Fed. Reg. at 66,014. Further, in this respect
the Rule contrasts starkly with the 2019 regulations, governing loans
disbursed or after July 1, 2020, which require a student borrower to prove
reckless or knowing misrepresentations or omissions “that directly and
clearly relate to” enrollment, continuing enrollment, or educational services
for which the loan was made. 34 C.F.R. § 668.206(e)(3) (July 1, 2020).
       For several reasons, the strict liability standard established by the Rule
almost surely cannot survive review under the APA. Obviously, imposing
liability without any level of intent is in tension with the Section 455(h)
requirement of specificity in the definition of actionable acts or omissions. If
the Department were to “specify” which acts or omissions were actionable,
there would rarely be an occasion for inadvertent misconduct, and there
would be no ground to hold schools liable for wholly innocent but actionable
misconduct. Imposing strict liability may well conflict with the statute.
       In addition, although the standard for setting aside agency actions as
arbitrary and capricious may be “narrow and highly deferential,” it is not
toothless. Huawei Techs. USA, Inc. v. FCC, 2 F.4th 421, 449 (5th Cir. 2021)
(quotation marks and citation omitted).          The strict liability standards,
encompassing even inadvertent misrepresentations by a school’s contractors
not subject to its day-to-day supervision, open the door to arbitrary and
inconsistent enforcement by agency officials unable or unwilling to
distinguish between close calls and deranged ones. See Angel Bros. Enters. v.
Walsh, 18 F.4th 827, 834 (5th Cir. 2021) (Jones, J., dissenting).

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       The Department argues that “harmless and inadvertent errors” are
“unlikely” to lead to the full discharge of a borrower’s debt. See 87 Fed. Reg.
at 65,921.   This is wholly unpersuasive.       As was explained above, by
authorizing full discharge and disallowing partial discharges of all loans—
including loans disbursed to a borrower prior to any actionable act or
omission by the school—the Rule eviscerates the need for a causal link
between the school’s conduct and a borrower’s injury.              Thus, the
Department’s contention that the Rule requires a causal link is simply
erroneous. See id. at 65,920. This argument, founded on what is “unlikely,”
also implicitly concedes the unbounded, and illegal, enforcement discretion
embedded in the Rule’s failure to promulgate specific terms of actionable
acts or omission.
       Also arbitrary and capricious is the Department’s inadequate
explanation of its decision to eliminate an intent requirement that existed in
previous regulations. The APA requires an agency to reach “reasonable and
reasonably explained” decisions.       See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A); FCC v.
Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U.S. 414, 423, 141 S. Ct. 1150, 1158 (2021).
Here, however, the Department absurdly states that “[r]equiring intent
would place too great a burden on an individual borrower.” 87 Fed. Reg. at
65,921. But proof of intent is ubiquitously required throughout the law and
can be proven through circumstantial evidence. See Crowe v. Henry, 115 F.3d
294, 297 (5th Cir. 1994). The Department’s explanation of the Rule itself
acknowledges that many state Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Practices
(“UDAP”) statutes, which continue to be relevant in borrower defense
claims involving loans disbursed prior to July 1, 2017, “require proof of
intent, knowledge, or recklessness—requirements that are not present in the
Federal standard.” 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,934.
       The Department’s further rationale, that “if the action resulted in
detriment to the borrower that warrants relief,” then knowledge or intent are

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                                 No. 23-50491

irrelevant, is equally unsatisfactory.      Id. at 65,921.   According to the
Department’s own estimates, in 30 to 80 percent of borrower-initiated cases,
claims against proprietary schools will arise from the group claims process,
in which the injury is presumed, rather than proven on an individual basis.
Id. at 66,016; 34 C.F.R. § 685.406(b)(2). In other words, many borrowers
who receive full discharges will be third-party beneficiaries of liability for
misconduct that inflicted no injury on them. In sum, the Department’s
decision to eliminate mens rea from the Rule is not adequately justified or
reasonably explained. The decision also conflicts with the Supreme Court’s
holding that agencies must offer a “reasoned explanation,” rather than a
mere “summary discussion” when they depart from a “longstanding earlier
position.”    Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, 579 U.S. 211, 222–24,
136 S. Ct. 2117, 2126, 2127 (2016).
       2. Agency Adjudication of Loan Discharge Claims
       The Rule claims to authorize the Department to adjudicate
(a) borrower claims for loan discharges and (b) recoupment claims against
schools. The Department is the “party against which borrowers assert a
defense to repayment.” 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,923. Both individual and group
adjudications may occur. 34 C.F.R.§§ 685.402, .403. The schools, which
could face recoupment liability following discharge, id. § 685.409(a)(1), must
respond to the borrower proceedings within 90 days or be deemed not to
contest the borrower defense. Id. § 685.405(d). Because “claims” may be
brought “at any time,” there is no regulatory limitation of actions.
Id. § 685.401(b). The evident goal of these adjudications is to shift student
debt liability to the schools.
       CCST protests that these procedures are ultra vires and violate due
process. The organization is substantially likely to prevail.

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                                       No. 23-50491

                a. Administrative Adjudications for Borrowers and Recoupment
         CCST is likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the
Higher Education Act does not allow the Department to adjudicate borrower
defense claims or recoupment claims by the Department against schools.
First, the text of Section 455(h) speaks only to the Secretary’s power to
promulgate regulations—not the power to adjudicate cases based on its
regulations. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that “when
Congress meant to confer adjudicatory authority . . . it did so explicitly and
set forth the relevant procedures in considerable detail.” Bank One Chi.,
N.A. v. Midwest Bank & Tr. Co., 516 U.S. 264, 274, 116 S. Ct. 637, 643 (1996)
(quoting Coit Indep. Joint Venture v. Fed. Sav. & Loan Ins. Corp, 489 U.S. 561,
574, 109 S. Ct. 1361, 1369 (1989)); see also Equitable Equip. Co. v. Dir., Off. of
Worker’s Comp. Programs, 191 F.3d 630, 632–33 (5th Cir. 1999) (holding that
the ALJ lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate a claim for attorney’s fees because
the statute only vested ALJ jurisdiction over “a claim for compensation”).
As CCST correctly argues, this “run-of-the-mill grant of rulemaking
authority” does not support “reading into [Section 455(h)] . . . the authority
to adjudicate” borrower discharge claims. RLC Indus. Co v. C.I.R., 58 F.3d
413, 418 (9th Cir. 1995). “[W]e find no secure signal here that Congress
intended to assign to the [Department of Education] responsibility for the
adjudication of private claims.” Bank One, 516 U.S. at 274, 116 S. Ct. at
643.18

         _____________________
         18
           The Rule also purports to authorize administrative adjudications of borrower
defense claims against the government. 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,910; 65,941; 65,945. Because
such claims are, in the Department’s view, analogous to claims for restitution or rescission,
87 Fed. Reg. 65,914, they are subject to sovereign immunity. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S.
651, 668-69, 94 S. Ct. 1347, 1358 (1974). But Congress did not waive sovereign immunity
for these claims.

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       Indeed, Section 455(h) essentially contradicts a grant of adjudicatory
power in stating that borrower defenses can be asserted “in any action arising
from or relating to a loan made under this part.” 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(h)
(emphasis added). The contemporaneous legal definition of “action” is “a
lawsuit brought in a court,” which is distinct from an adjudication brought in
an administrative tribunal. Action, BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY (6th ed.
1990).19 The Department does not respond to this meaningful choice of
language.
       Regarding recoupment adjudications against schools based on
borrower defense claim adjudications, the Department asserts authority
under a provision requiring schools to accept “responsibility and financial
liability” for breaching participation agreements with the Department,
20 U.S.C.§ 1087d(a)(3). That this provision and related audit and liability
functions are performed within the Department and are subject to
administrative hearings is simply not the same as the adjudications
authorized by the Rule for individual or group claims alleging violations of
the newly created borrower defenses. The new claims function to shortcut
conventional civil litigation between private parties, not to resolve schools’

       _____________________
       19
            BALLENTINE’S LAW DICTIONARY is consistent with this definition:
       A judicial proceeding either in law or in equity, to obtain relief at the hands
       of a court. A judicial remedy for the enforcement or protection of a right,
       or a legal proceeding in which a plaintiff claims against a defendant or fund
       the enforcement of some obligation toward the plaintiff which is binding
       upon the defendant or the fund. A prosecution in a court by one party
       against another party for the enforcement or protection of a right, the
       redress or prevention of a wrong, or the punishment of a public offense,
       without regard to the particular form of the procedure.

       (3d ed. 1969).

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more general compliance under agreements with the Department that
enabled federally backed student loans in the first place.
       The Department attempts to rely on the “broader context” of the
Higher Education Act in support of its newly crafted authority.                    See
20 U.S.C. §§ 1094(b), 1094(c), 1099c-1(a)(1)). In so doing, it principally
relies on Chauffeur’s Training Sch., Inc v. Spellings, 478 F.3d 117, 125–30
(2d Cir. 2007), which upheld the Department’s implicit statutory authority
to conduct an administrative proceeding that assessed liability against a
school for loan program violations. Chauffeur’s is distinguishable from this
case. First, Chauffeur’s did not turn on Section 455(h), the relevant statutory
provision here. Second, the Department, acting in Chauffeur’s, had grafted
additional remedies onto a statutorily authorized proceeding under Section
1094(c). Id. at 127. The Chauffeur’s court did not review an adjudicatory
regime created out of whole cloth and lacking any statutory basis. Moreover,
under the Rule before us, schools facing recoupment proceedings are denied
a hearing under Subpart G of Part 668 of its regulations, which implement
Section 1094(c). See 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,949; 34 C.F.R. § 668.81–100. Third,
the statutory interpretation in Chauffeur’s relied on Chevron20 deference to
the Department; but the Department makes no Chevron argument here, and
Section 455(h)’s plain statutory language belies deference to agency
interpretation.
       The Department’s “broader context” argument is far from
compelling. Nothing in the text of Section 1094(c) or Section 1099(c)-1(a)(1)
specifically mentions the Department’s authority to adjudicate claims, much
less the authority to adjudicate borrower-defense or recoupment claims. The

       _____________________
       20
           Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843–45,
104 S. Ct. 2778, 2782–83 (1984).

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closest the Department comes to identifying a provision in the Higher
Education Act that authorizes it to adjudicate borrower-defense claims is
Section 1094(b). But this provision only allows the Department to hold
hearings concerning “final audit[s] or program review determination[s]”
relevant to an institution’s ability to participate in Title IV. The subject
matter and structure of those proceedings is distinguishable from the
borrower defense claims or recoupment claims at issue here.
       b. Constitutional Problems Surrounding Administrative Adjudications
       Accepted principles of judicial restraint counsel against our deciding
constitutional issues where, as here, the absence of statutory authority for the
Department’s assumption of adjudicatory authority and its violation of the
APA are most likely to succeed. We note, however, inherent tension between
the adjudication of “borrower defenses” to their loans insofar as a
borrower’s success will regularly lead to a de facto transfer from the school to
the borrower following recoupment proceedings. The adjudication process
resembles administrative decisions involving “private rights” rather than
“public rights.”    The Supreme Court, however, has made clear that
Congress may not withdraw adjudication of “private rights” cases from
Article III courts. See Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. 462, 482–95, 131 S. Ct.
2594, 2608–2615 (2011); Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.,
59 U.S. 272 (1855). Yet, especially where “borrower defense[s]” under the
Rule include breaches of state law and contract rights, these are the very
paradigm of private rights. See 34 C.F.R. § 685.401(b)(3) (establishing a
borrower defense for state breach of contract claims), id. § 685.401(c)
(allowing borrowers to seek discharge on the basis of other state law causes
of action).
       To be sure, the Department seeks to disaggregate the integrated
process of borrower-defense and recoupment, and it focuses on recoupment

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                                        No. 23-50491

against the school in favor of the Department as a quintessential “public
right.”      But its adjudication procedures render the two proceedings
dependent on each other, because the legal claims and facts that authorize
the Department to discharge the borrower’s debt under the Rule are the same
as those underpinning the Department’s authority to pursue recoupment
against the school. See 34 C.F.R. § 668.125(e)(2) (the school bears the
burden to prove that “the decision to discharge the loans was incorrect or
inconsistent with the law and that the institution is not liable for the loan
amounts discharged or reimbursed” in the subsequent recoupment
proceedings), id. § 668.125(e)(3) (the only evidence that may be submitted in
recoupment proceedings concerns the bases cited by the Department in
adjudicating the borrower discharge claims and materials submitted to the
Department or relied on in the borrower discharge proceedings).                           For
practical purposes, as summarized by CCST, these procedures act to shift
debt liability to schools.
        The Department also contends that the loan discharge derives from
the relationship between the borrower and the federal government, and a
grant of administrative relief through its adjudicative process will not dispose
of or otherwise affect any related claims or defenses that the borrower or the
borrower’s institution might assert in collateral litigation. We take no
position on whether these propositions are correct,21 but even so, they do not
        _____________________
        21
           Nonetheless, it is difficult to reconcile the Department’s position that these
administrative adjudications would not be dispositive in collateral litigation with the rest of
the Rule. Indeed, if collateral estoppel would not attach to the outcome of any
administrative adjudication under the Rule, then the adjudication regime established by the
Rule would open the door to potential double recovery for borrowers against schools after
their loans have successfully been discharged, and rather than simplifying the process,
would lead to duplication of proceedings. See 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,908 (stating that the
Department sought to “strike[] a balance between providing transparency, clarity, and ease
of administration while simultaneously giving adequate protections to borrowers,
institutions, the Department, and the public monies that fund Federal student loans.”).

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necessarily trump the Article III concerns by embracing the possibility of
non-final administrative outcomes or duplicative proceedings.
                c. Rebuttable Presumptions and Group Claims Adjudications
        For group claims, the Rule establishes a rebuttable presumption that
“the act or omission giving rise to the borrower defense affected each
member of the group in deciding to attend, or continue attending, the
institution, and that such reliance was reasonable.” Id. § 685.406(b)(2).22
This regulation embodies three “rebuttable” presumptions: that each
member of the group knew about the particular claimed borrower defense;
that each member relied on the representation, omission, or other act; and
that each member’s reliance was reasonable. Id. Further, related regulations
largely undercut schools’ ability to rebut the presumptions, as they have no
independent right to probe these facts through discovery or witness
examinations.      Id. §§ 685.402–406, 668.125.            Indeed, the Department
explained that it need not share with a school related evidence in its
possession. 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,912.
        CCST is likely to prevail in its contentions that the Department has
no statutory authority to create evidentiary requirements, that the
presumptions are effectively unrebuttable, and that the Department cannot
use evidentiary devices to achieve substantive results. The first argument
concerning statutory authority would seem to follow as a necessary

        _____________________
Moreover, once the borrower’s debts have been discharged, it is difficult to see what the
borrower’s remaining potential damages for any subsequent civil suit governed by state law
would be, especially for a borrower whose claims sounded in contract rather than tort law,
as punitive damages are only available in the latter.
        22
           For closed schools, the Rule also establishes a rebuttable presumption that the
actionable act or omission of the school that caused the borrower detriment “warrants
relief” being afforded to the borrower. 34 C.F.R. § 685.401(e).

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implication from our earlier conclusion that the Department lacks power to
adjudicate claims. Further, we agree with CCST that it is unreasonable to
presume that every borrower involved in a group claim is likely to satisfy all
three presumptions. It suffices to take just one of them, that a challenged act
or omission affected a student’s decision to attend or continue attending an
institution. 34 C.F.R. § 685.406(b)(2). Attendance decisions are highly fact-
specific, and many of the actionable misrepresentations explicitly listed in the
Rule, such as a faculty member’s qualifications or whether a particular charge
is customary, are too discrete to justify a universal presumption—
particularly given that the only available remedy is full discharge of the loan.
Id. §§ 668.72(h), 668.73(b).
       The Rule’s group claims process involves applying presumptions to
matters requiring individualized proof and extrapolating them collectively.
Thus, formulating a group under the Rule is far easier than the process
required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. See 34 C.F.R. § 685.402.
Rule 23 protects the integrity of civil class actions for money damages by
requiring, at a minimum, that the class representative’s claim is “typical” of
that of the class and that common questions of law and fact “predominate”
in the case. Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2), (b)(3). As a result, this court has
repeatedly rejected certifying class actions, including for fraud, where
damages and reliance issues are highly individualized. See Castano v Am.
Tobacco Co., 84 F.3d 734, 745 (5th Cir. 1996) (“[A] fraud class action cannot
be certified when individual reliance will be an issue.”); McManus v.
Fleetwood Enters. Inc., 320 F.3d 545, 550 (5th Cir. 2003) (“Reliance will vary
from plaintiff to plaintiff.”); Patterson v. Mobil Oil Co., 241 F.3d 417, 419 (5th
Cir. 2001) (“Claims for money damages in which individual reliance is an
element are poor candidates for class treatment, at best.”). Handling group
claims under the Rule thus lacks due process protections available under the
class action process.

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       The Department’s defense of the rebuttable presumptions and the
group claims process primarily reflects the Department’s determination to
resolve what it discretionarily decides are “virtually identical claims” on an
aggregate basis. But the Department’s explanation of its “reasonable” policy
conclusions in the Federal Register commentary does not remedy the
incompatibility of its procedures with standard civil litigation practice. As
CCST notes, presumptions in the law result when “proof of one fact renders
the existence of another fact so probable that it is sensible and timesaving to
assume the truth of the inferred fact. . . until the adversary disproves it.”
Chem. Mfrs. Ass’n. v. Dep’t. of Transp., 105 F.3d 702, 705 (D.C. Cir. 1997)
(quotation marks and citation omitted). The Department’s attempt to
substitute its unexplained “experience” regarding “widespread and
pervasive” misstatements for proof justifying the presumptions is arbitrary
and capricious. “[T]he argument for agency expertise and judgment does
not get [the Department] very far,” as “falling back on unexplained claims of
agency expertise does not carry the [Department’s] burden” under the APA.
El Paso Elec. Co. v. FERC, 76 F.4th 352, 364 (5th Cir. 2023). Presumptions,
especially in administrative proceedings that may generate institution-
destroying liability, cannot be a matter of Department ipse dixit.
       Further evidence of incompatibility lies in the Rule’s liability standard
for both individual and group claims: totality of the circumstances. 34 C.F.R.
§ 685.401(e). What is the “totality of the circumstances,” and how, if at all,
does it differ from “preponderance of the evidence”?            This standard
amounts to another loophole affording immense non-reviewable discretion
to the Department.
       The Department also contends that none of the presumptions change
the burden of persuasion, which will still require proof by a preponderance of
the evidence. 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,922. First, as just noted, the liability
standard in the Rule is “totality of the circumstances,” not “preponderance

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of the evidence.” Second, that an affected school would still have a “full
opportunity” to rebut a presumption, showing it to be “inappropriate”
under the circumstances, does not remedy the harm associated with the
erroneous requirement of any presumption. By its terms, a rebuttable
presumption displaces the ordinary burden of proof and means that if the
evidence is of equal weight between the parties, the school will lose because
it has failed to rebut the presumption. Third, contrary to the Department’s
attempt to cabin presumptions for the sake of this approach, there is nothing
in the text of the Rule to suggest that group claims involving minor
misrepresentations are “unlikely” to be brought or that the rebuttable
presumptions would be applied differently in those proceedings. Again, the
Department urges this court to defer to commentary rather than the
unlimited text of the Rule.
       Ultimately, the evidentiary presumptions and group-claim procedures
built into the Rule are not designed to further the truth-seeking process.
Instead, these are policy-driven mechanisms designed to selectively target
proprietary schools, as the Department expects that 75 percent of all
borrower claims associated with proprietary schools will be group claims. Id.
at 65,993. The Department has stated outright that it sees driving enrollment
away from these schools to be a “benefit.” Id. at. 65,996.
       In sum, CCST is likely to succeed in challenging the rebuttable
presumptions and group claims procedures as arbitrary and capricious.
“Only the untaught layman or the charlatan lawyer can answer that
procedures matter not.          Procedural fairness and regularity are of the
indispensable essence of liberty.” Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei,
345 U.S. 206, 224, 73 S. Ct. 625, 635 (1953) (Jackson, J., joined by
Frankfurter, J., dissenting).

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        3. Closed-School Provision
        Not least in this pantheon of legal problems associated with the Rule
is its closed-school provision, which is likely unlawful on several grounds.
First, the closed-school provision exceeds the Department’s statutory
authority by re-defining a school closure to contradict the clear text of the
statute. Second, the closed-school provision arbitrarily authorizes automatic,
full discharges of debt without proof of causation (a) for students who withdrew
from their programs up to 180 days prior to the Department’s newly invented
closure date, and (b) for borrowers who did not accept or complete “a
program at another branch or location of the school or through a teach-out
agreement” at another comparable school one year after the school
“closure” or their last day of attendance at a continuation program.
Borrowers are presumed to have withdrawn without needing to prove
causation, and they are presumed to have suffered financial “detriment” as
well.
               a. Redefinition of School “Closure”
        The authority for discharging student debt associated with school
closures derives from 20 U.S.C. § 1087(c), which states in pertinent part:
               (c) Discharge
               (1) In general
               If . . . the student borrower, or the student on whose
               behalf a parent borrowed, is unable to complete the
               program in which such student is enrolled due to the closure
               of the institution . . . then the Secretary shall discharge the
               borrower’s liability on the loan (including interest and
               collection fees) by repaying the amount owed on the
               loan and shall subsequently pursue any claim available to

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              such borrower against the institution and its affiliates and
              principals or settle the loan obligation . . . .
              (2) Assignment
              A borrower whose loan has been discharged pursuant to
              this subsection shall be deemed to have assigned to the
              United States the right to a loan refund up to the amount
              discharged against the institution and its affiliates and
              principals.
(emphases added).
       The Rule is a striking contrast, as it redefines a school or institutional
“closure” as follows:
       the school’s closure date is the earlier of: the date, determined by
       the Secretary, that the school ceased to provide educational
       instruction in programs in which most students at the school were
       enrolled, or a date determined by the Secretary that reflects
       when the school ceased to provide educational instruction for
       all of its students[.]
34 C.F.R. § 685.214(a)(2)(i) (emphasis added).
       “We start with the key statutory term: [“closure”]. As usual, our job
is to interpret the words consistent with their ordinary meaning . . . at the
time Congress enacted the statute.” Wisconsin Cent. Ltd. v. United States,
585 U.S. 274, 277, 138 S. Ct. 2067, 2070 (2018) (internal quotation marks
and citation omitted). There is nothing in the text or context of the statute
to indicate that the word “closure” bears anything other than its ordinary
meaning, which in relevant part provides that a closure is “a bringing of some

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activity to a stop: cessation of operations.” Closure, WEBSTER’S NEW
INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 428 (3d ed. 1981).23
        Under the Rule’s definition of “closure,” the commonsense and
dictionary meaning is at best an afterthought in the regulatory language. The
most significant part of the Rule confers discretion on the Secretary to
“determine” when the school “ceased to provide” “programs” in which
“most students” were enrolled. Each of the additional terms is vague,
subject to arbitrary and unequal enforcement, and potentially sweeping.
        A straightforward hypothetical shows how the Rule’s expanded
definition of “closure” exposes a school to financial liability for actions that
Congress clearly did not intend to cover. Consider a campus with one
thousand students that previously offered two programs: a culinary program
with 490 students and a cybersecurity program with 510 students. The
school chooses to relocate the cybersecurity program to a new campus so that
the original campus can be retrofitted to enhance culinary education. In
doing so, the school has “closed” the original campus according to the Rule
merely by choosing to reorganize its operations. Under the statutory text of
Section 1087(c), none of the cybersecurity students who had to relocate to
other campuses would be eligible for discharge, and the school would not be
exposed to any financial liability to the Department. But the newly minted

        _____________________
        23
                See      also      Cambridge           Dictionary,           available     at
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/closure?q=closure+ (“the fact of
a business, organization, etc. stopping operating”); Oxford English Dictionary,
available at https://www.oed.com/dictionary/closure_n?tab=meaning_and_use#9161981
(“the act of closing or shutting; closed condition; a bringing to a conclusion; end, close”).

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Rule subjects the school24 to enormous financial exposure25 for “closing”
even if it is still operates and educates 49 percent of the students who were
enrolled at that location prior to the reorganization. Such an expansion in the
Department’s power and ability to impose liability on schools not only
conflicts with the statute, but it also eviscerates schools’ ability to reduce or
relocate certain programing at certain locations in response to legitimate
business and educational needs.
        In defense of this expanded definition of “closure,” the Department
argues first that the change is necessary to protect borrowers from a situation
where they would be denied discharge after the school ceased to provide most
programming but “intentionally ke[pt] a single, small program open long
enough to avoid the [lookback] window.” See 87 Fed. Reg. at 65,966. This
argument, however, impermissibly substitutes a global presumption of
dischargeability (again) for the statute’s explicit requirement of proof that
the student’s inability to complete a program was “due to” the closure.
20 U.S.C. § 1087(c)(1). Second, the Department asserts, with no supporting
citation, that the Rule does not expand the overall scope of which schools are
considered “closed” because borrowers can obtain discharge only after a
school has entirely ceased operations. The plain text of the Rule, as explained
in the above hypothetical, contradicts that assertion.

        _____________________
        24
         A “school” is defined in the closed-school discharge regulations as “a school’s
main campus or any location or branch of the main campus.” 34 C.F.R. § 685.214(a)(2)(ii).
        25
           Under this hypothetical, all the cybersecurity students who did not complete the
same program at another branch or location of the school, or through a teach-out agreement
approved by the school’s accrediting agency and, if applicable, the school’s State
authorizing agency, within one year of this reorganization (or their last date of attendance
at a continuation program that they started but failed to complete), would be eligible for
automatic discharge.

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        For the same reasons that “[a] roof is not a floor,” a school that is
“open” is not “closed.” Diamond Roofing Co v. Occupational Safety & Health
Rev. Comm’n, 528 F.2d 645, 647 (5th Cir. 1976). We conclude that any
challenge to the Department’s statutory authority to promulgate
34 C.F.R. § 685.214(a)(2)(i) is likely to succeed on the merits.
                b. A School’s Closure Must Be the Actual Reason for Withdrawal
        The closed-school provision of the Rule provides for automatic
discharges for students who “withdrew from the school not more than 180
calendar days before the school closed.” Id. § 685.214(d)(1)(i)(B). In doing
so, the Rule does not require borrowers to show that they were unable to
complete their program “due to the closure of the institution.”
20 U.S.C. § 1087(c)(1) (emphasis added).              Instead, the Rule allows the
Secretary to discharge an eligible borrower’s loan under the closed school
provision without an application or any statement from the borrower 1 year
after the institution’s closure date26 if the borrower did not complete the
program at another branch or location of the school or through a teach-out
agreement at another school. 34 C.F.R. § 685.214(c).
        This substantial expansion in the number of borrowers eligible for
discharge exceeds the agency’s statutory authority because it eliminates the
causation requirement Congress included in the statute in favor of an
arbitrary temporal presumption.           The closed-school provision provides
automatic discharge to borrowers despite personal or financial or educational
reasons completely unrelated to the school’s decision to shut down or
suspend instruction in certain locations or programs. Id.

        _____________________
        26
            Borrowers who accepted but did not complete a continuation program are
eligible for automatic discharge one year after their last date of attendance at the other
branch or location or in the teach-out program. 34 C.F.R. § 685.214(c)(2).

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       The closed-school provision also automatically discharges the debt
held by borrowers who did not complete a “program at another branch or
location of the school or through a teach-out agreement” at another
comparable school, or one year after their last day of attendance at a
continuation program. 34 C.F.R. § 685.214(c). Again, no proof is required
that the closure actually caused the students not to complete the program.
This abandonment of the causation requirement, like the 180-day
“inference,” is overinclusive and exceeds the Department’s statutory
authority. The Department may not justify the Rule by stating that the
Higher Education Act does not foreclose the Department’s approach, or that
CCST’s policy preference is not a sufficient basis to invalidate the Rule. An
agency’s burden is to establish that its governing statute enables its
regulations. The Department’s burden here is insurmountable given the
clarity of the relevant statutory provisions.
       This adds yet another reason why CCST is likely to succeed on the
merits of its challenge to the closed-school provisions.
                D. The Balance of Harms and the Public Interest
       The balance-of-harms and public-interest factors merge when the
government opposes an injunction. See Nken, 556 U.S. at 435, 129 S. Ct. at
1762; U.S. Navy Seals 1-26 v. Biden, 27 F.4th 336, 353 (5th Cir. 2022).
       First, the harms CCST and its members face by the failure to maintain
the status quo are substantially more severe than those faced by the
Department and borrowers with pending discharge claims. We are not
convinced by the Department’s arguments that the 2019 Rule provides an
inadequate framework for its work administering and reviewing pending
claims, or that borrowers with pending claims would be unfairly prejudiced
or financially injured by the granting of a preliminary injunction pending final
judgment.

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       The burden imposed on the public favors a stay as well. A failure to
stay the borrower-defense and closed-school provisions of the Rule would
immediately hit CCST’s members (and other schools) with enormous and
unrecoverable compliance costs—which would inevitably be passed on to
students. Evidence CCST points to in the record shows that a failure to stay
the Rule would significantly constrain schools’ operations and prevent them
from devoting resources to educating their students, upgrading facilities, and
constructing new ones. The only alternative to incurring these costs is for
the school to withdraw from Title IV entirely, which would be to the
detriment of students who rely on the availability of Direct Loans. Such a
consequence would harm the public at large.
       We thus conclude that all the equitable factors favor the granting of a
preliminary injunction.
                    E. Relief Should Not Be Party Restricted
       Section 705 of the APA authorizes a reviewing court to “issue all
necessary and appropriate process to postpone the effective date of an agency
action” that is pending review. 5 U.S.C. § 705. Nothing in the text of
Section 705, nor of Section 706, suggests that either preliminary or ultimate
relief under the APA needs to be limited to CCST or its members. Instead,
we conclude that the scope of preliminary relief under Section 705 aligns with
the scope of ultimate relief under Section 706, which is not party-restricted
and allows a court to “set aside” an unlawful agency action. See Griffin v.
HM Florida-ORL, LLC, 144 S. Ct. 1, 1 n.1 (Mem) (2023) (Kavanaugh, J.,
concurring in the denial of the application for stay); Mila Sohoni, The Power
to Vacate A Rule, 88 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1121, 1173 (2020) (“The term
‘set aside’ means invalidation—and an invalid rule may not be applied to
anyone.”) (footnote omitted); Jonathan Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure
Fallacy, 104 VA. L. REV. 933, 1012–13 (2018) (“Unlike judicial review of

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statutes, in which courts enter judgments and decrees only against litigants,
the APA . . . go[es] further by empowering the judiciary to act directly against
the challenged agency action. This statutory power to ‘set aside’ agency
action is more than a mere non-enforcement remedy . . . . In these situations,
the courts do hold the power to ‘strike down’ an agency’s work, and the
disapproved agency action is treated as though it had never happened.”).
       The almost certainly unlawful provisions of the Rule that CCST
challenges apply to all Title IV participants and are thus almost certainly
unlawful as to all Title IV participants. Thus, the stay provided here mirrors
the relief granted by the Supreme Court in 2016, when it stayed the Clean
Power Plan without party limitation, West Virginia v. EPA, 577 U.S. 1126,
136 S. Ct. 1000 (2016), and by this court in 2021, when it stayed OSHA’s
vaccine mandate without party limitation, BST Holdings, L.L.C. v. OSHA,
17 F.4th 604 (5th Cir. 2021). The Department’s protests against nationwide
relief are incoherent in light of its use of the Rule to prescribe uniform federal
standards. “When a reviewing court determines that agency regulations are
unlawful, the ordinary result is that the rules are vacated—not that their
application to the individual petitioners is proscribed.”            Harmon v.
Thornburgh, 878 F.2d 484, 495 n.21 (D.C. Cir. 1989).
       Against this backdrop of specific statutory text and longstanding
administrative law principles, the Department’s arguments that general
equitable and constitutional principles require the panel to limit any relief to
the named parties do not hold water. “Necessary and appropriate process”
does not mean that the relief awarded under Section 705 can only be specific
to the plaintiff. 5 U.S.C. § 705. Rather, it means, as the Department
acknowledges in its own briefing, that the relief should only involve
postponing the effective date of the portions of the Rule that CCST actually
challenges and for which it has shown a likelihood of success on the merits.
The Department’s argument that it would be improper to enjoin portions of

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the Rule that are unchallenged or for which CCST has not shown a likelihood
of success on the merits is correct. But it is also irrelevant, as the preliminary
injunction sought by CCST, and granted in this opinion, does not affect
portions of the Rule that do not relate to borrower-defenses, closed-schools,
or adjudication procedures.
                              III. Conclusion
       CCST has met the criteria to satisfy a preliminary injunction, and the
district court erred by concluding that CCST faced no irreparable harm. We
REVERSE the district court’s judgment, REMAND, and instruct the
district court to postpone the effective date of the borrower-defense and
closed-school discharge provisions of the Rule pending final judgment as
specified above. The stay pending appeal remains in effect until the district
court enters the preliminary injunction.
       STAY PENDING APPEAL MAINTAINED PENDING
ENTRY OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION, CASE REVERSED
AND REMANDED.

                                       57