A coalition of Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday filed a lawsuit targeting the Trump administration’s new caps on federal student loans, arguing the limits will restrict access to education in certain healthcare fields that communities rely on. The plaintiffs said the rules would disproportionately affect students seeking degrees tied to critical healthcare professions and would ultimately reduce the pipeline of trained providers.
In a written statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said the federal rule “will shut talented people out of critical professions and leave communities with fewer healthcare providers they desperately need.” James added that the plaintiffs “cannot afford fewer nurses, fewer providers, or fewer opportunities for working people to enter these essential fields.”
The lawsuit was filed by plaintiffs representing 24 states and the District of Columbia, according to the legal action described by the Associated Press. The filing argues that the administration’s loan caps will make it more difficult for students pursuing certain healthcare degrees to obtain the training and education required for the fields they want to enter.
The U.S. Department of Education defended the caps in response, saying the policy is meant to influence higher education pricing. Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a written statement that the loan caps were “already incentivizing colleges and universities to lower tuition.”
The new limits stem from a 2025 law, described by the plaintiffs and the administration, in which Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to enact new federal student loan caps. Under the framework described in the lawsuit, programs designated as “graduate” face a loan cap of $100,000, while professional degree programs are capped at $200,000. The change replaces a previous approach in which graduate students could borrow up to the cost of their degree, the AP reported.
The loan caps are scheduled to take effect in July, and the administration’s definitions of which programs qualify as “professional” are a central point of dispute. The Education Department’s definition of professional degrees, as described by the AP story, includes pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology.
At the same time, the Education Department’s definition did not include other healthcare training fields that rely on licensure and certification, including nursing, physical therapy, dental hygiene, social work and occupational therapy, the Associated Press reported. Advocates for those excluded tracks said communities would feel the impact through reduced availability of providers in settings with limited healthcare access.
The American Nurses Association president Jennifer Mensick Kennedy, in a statement provided when the final rule passed last month, said the policy “will be felt in real communities, for example, in rural areas where nurse practitioners, midwives, and nurse anesthesiologists are often the only providers of core care services.”