7/17/2015 – Judges Rebuke Limits on Wiping Out Student Loan Debt (The New York Times)

Ms. Roth, 68, worked in many jobs over the years, but she never made quite enough to pay back the $33,000 she borrowed years earlier for an education degree she couldn’t afford to complete, and certainly not the $95,000 it ballooned to in default. She filed for bankruptcy, wiping out five figures in medical debts. But erasing student loans requires initiating a separate legal process, where borrowers must prove that paying the debt would cause an “undue hardship.”

That Ms. Roth, now living on Social Security, managed to succeed in what is known as a notoriously difficult process is not even the most remarkable aspect of her case. Instead, the ruling captured the attention of other judges and legal scholars because of a judge’s bluntly worded written opinion that rebuked the widely adopted hardship standard used to determine whether a debtor is worthy of a discharge.The judge, Jim D. Pappas, in his concurring opinion for the bankruptcy appellate panel decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said the analysis used “to determine the existence of an undue hardship is too narrow, no longer reflects reality and should be revised.”

Read the full article in The New York Times.