WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 15: U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon prepares to do a live TV interview … More with Fox News outside of the White House on July 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Department of Education quietly announced that student loan forgiveness under the IBR plan has been paused. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Department of Education has suspended student loan forgiveness under the Income-Based Repayment plan, or IBR. The IBR plan is one of several income-driven repayment plan programs offered to borrowers, and is the only current plan not subject to any legal challenge or court injunction.
“Currently, IBR forgiveness is paused while our systems are updated,” announced the department in updated guidance on pending court challenges issued earlier this month. “IBR forgiveness will resume once those updates are completed.”
The department’s announcement corroborates previous statements by former department officials. And it confirms what some borrowers who had reached the threshold for student loan forgiveness – but didn’t get a discharge – had already suspected. It is the first public confirmation from the department that student loan forgiveness under IBR has been halted, at least for now. Here’s what we know, and what borrowers can do.
Student Loan Forgiveness Under IBR Is Not Blocked By Any Court
Like all income-driven repayment plans, IBR uses a formula tied to a borrower’s income and family size to determine a borrower’s monthly payment requirement. Payments are then recalculated every 12 months. Borrowers who haven’t paid off their student loans in full by the end of their repayment term – which is 25 years for borrowers who took out their loans prior to July 1, 2014, and 20 years for those who took out loans on or after that date – would be entitled to student loan forgiveness.
But IBR is unique in that it is not directly subject to any legal challenge right now. Last year, a group of Republican-led states filed a lawsuit to stop the SAVE plan, a new income-driven repayment option created by the Biden administration in 2023. A federal appeals court then issued an injunction blocking SAVE last summer. The court’s decision, as well as a subsequent ruling issued earlier this year, called into question whether student loan forgiveness was authorized under the federal statute that governs SAVE. This same statute also underlies two other income-driven plans – ICR and PAYE. But IBR was created separately by Congress, and the IBR statute expressly authorizes student loan forgiveness at the end of the 20- or 25-year repayment term. The appeals court acknowledged this in its recent rulings.
As a result, student loan forgiveness under SAVE, ICR, and PAYE is blocked. But student loan forgiveness under IBR is not. The department confirmed this in its updated guidance on the pending litigation that was issued earlier in July.
“Forgiveness as a feature of the SAVE, PAYE, and ICR Plans is currently paused, because those plans were not created by Congress,” said the department. “Generally, ED can and will still process loan forgiveness for the IBR Plan, which was separately enacted by Congress.”
But despite this, the department is not processing student loan forgiveness under IBR for borrowers who reach the 20- or 25-year threshold (separate programs, like Public Service Loan Forgiveness, shouldn’t be impacted). And the department’s announcement confirms accusations leveled by a former official with the Office of Federal Student Aid, who suggested in a declaration filed in a separate legal challenge over mass layoffs at the department that the Trump administration might be violating the law by blocking debt relief under IBR.
“It is my understanding that as of April or early May 2025, federal student loan borrowers who are eligible for income-based repayment cancellation were still not having their loans cancelled—a process that has been paused since July 2024—despite the statutory obligation to do so,” said the official. The same official also indicated that the department was having difficulty updating qualifying student loan forgiveness payment counts.
IBR Student Loan Forgiveness Pause Is Related To Court Injunction, Says Department
The Department of Education provided only a vague explanation for the suspension of student loan forgiveness under IBR, suggesting it was paused “while our systems are updated to accurately count months not affected by the court’s injunction” directed at the SAVE plan.
The department may
