Members of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union in the United States, announced on Wednesday a lawsuit against student loan servicer Navient, alleging that the company deceived borrowers and prevented them from accessing debt relief.
"Navient has purposely and systematically trapped teachers, nurses and other public service workers under a mountain of student debt instead of providing them with accurate information about their loan options," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
The lawsuit centers on Navient's handling of the public service loan forgiveness program, which allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments. The nine plaintiffs are composed of teachers, professors and other public servants, and the lawsuit seeks to become a class action.
The union members allege that Navient, one of the largest administers of federal student loans, failed to inform borrowers of public service loan forgiveness and even steered potentially eligible borrowers away from the consumer protection.
Navient did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Most teachers should qualify for public service loan forgiveness," said Mark Kantrowitz, founder of FinAid.
However it's not always in the financial interest of lenders such as Navient to help borrowers into the debt relief program, he said, because they then lose the business to FedLoan, the company that administers the public service loan forgiveness program for the government.
That the program is failing teachers is ironic, said Clare McCann, a federal policy expert at the New America Foundation.
"Teachers are one of the groups it was specifically designed to help," McCann said, adding that there are likely tens of thousands of educators who should be eligible for the program.
In a recent survey of American Federation of Teachers' members who are struggling financially, 80 percent of respondents said that their education debt was either "challenging" or "a major burden."
One of the plaintiffs is Kathryn Hyland, a middle school literacy teacher and coach in New York. According to the lawsuit, Hyland was in contact with Navient since 2009 and told by the servicer that she would be eligible for public service loan forgiveness in 2017.
In 2016, Hyland called to confirm that she was on track. Only then did the servicer inform her that her federal loan type made her ineligible for the relief. (To qualify, borrowers need to hold direct federal loans, not the federal family education loan.)
CNBC has interviewed teachers who've made the same complaint against Navient. Debbie Baker, a music teacher in Oklahoma's public schools, paid her student loans for 10 years, all the while believing she was on her way to debt forgiveness.
Debbie Baker
"Year after year I would tell them, 'Now I'm going after public service loan forgiveness,' and they'd say, 'Okay. Well, you can't apply until 2017,'" Baker said, about her conversations with Navient.
Toward the end of that decade of payments, Baker tried to certify her forgiveness. Again, that was the first time she learned that she didn't qualify because she had the wrong type of federal student loan. Navient had never informed her that her loan excluded her from the program. "I almost threw up," Baker said. "I've been teaching 18 years and I still don't make $40,000 — and now I have to start all over."
The lawsuits against Navient are mounting. Five states (Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, California and Mississippi) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have sued the company for misleading borrowers. Navient disputes all accusations.
"Once you start to rack up numbers like that," McCann said. "It definitely seems worthy of concern."
More from Personal Finance
These are the ways student loans stop people from buying a house
Student loan nightmare: Some borrowers have to start over
People with massive student debt hope Trump will let them declare bankruptcy
