Two Different Cases, Two Different Promises

Borrowers routinely confuse these cases, so let's separate them cleanly.

Sweet v. Cardona (now Sweet v. McMahon) is the borrower defense settlement. It covers people who claim their schools defrauded them. When the court granted final approval, it secured roughly $6 billion in relief for approximately 200,000 class members and — critically — the court retained jurisdiction to enforce the deal [3][18]. The settlement promised automatic discharges and refunds on a staged timeline, with relief to be delivered to the original "Exhibit C" group of borrowers first [1][2].

AFT v. McMahon is the PSLF and IDR case. The American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration's Education Department after it halted forgiveness processing for public service workers and income-driven repayment borrowers. That case won court supervision specifically over PSLF and IDR forgiveness, plus a government agreement to deliver relief and protect borrowers from tax liability [5][12][28].

Sweet covers school-fraud (borrower defense) claims. AFT covers PSLF and income-driven repayment forgiveness. If you're a public service worker waiting on PSLF, your case is AFT — not Sweet.

What Sweet Promised — and the Deadlines It Blew

The Sweet settlement set firm deadlines. The Department was supposed to deliver relief to Exhibit C class members by July 28, 2024. It didn't. By August 1, 2024, the Project on Predatory Student Lending publicly accused the Department of being in "significant breach" of the settlement [17]. That breach finding is the receipt: the promise had a date, the date passed, and the relief didn't arrive.

The story didn't improve quietly. By late 2025, the administration was actively seeking to delay processing further. On December 12, 2025, a federal judge rejected that request, refusing to let the Department push back Sweet forgiveness [15]. That was a win — but a defensive one. The court wasn't accelerating relief; it was simply blocking the government from stalling. Even after subsequent deadlines passed, many class members' claims remained unresolved [6][10][19].

What AFT Promised — and When

The AFT timeline is more recent and just as instructive.

In March 2025, internal tracking at our office flagged the first wave of lawsuits responding to the Department's takedown of IDR applications — the moment the queue started backing up. Through spring and summer, the problem deepened. On July 16, 2025, Forbes reported that the repayment backlog and PSLF Buyback figures were already "raising alarms" [14].

By mid-September 2025, AFT escalated hard. On September 16, 2025, it filed for court orders to protect PSLF and IDR [30], and around September 19, 2025, NPR documented the Department's forgiveness halt [31]. A separate class action landed the same week [26][35]. The pressure worked: by October 17, 2025, AFT and the Department reached a settlement (awaiting court approval), with the Department agreeing to publish six-monthly IDR and PSLF status reports and restart forgiveness [12][29]. Forbes summarized the restart on October 20, 2025 [24].

The promise was explicit: forgiveness resumes, IBR barriers ease, backlog reports get filed, and borrowers are protected from tax liability [23][28].

The Reality the Status Reports Revealed

Here's where dated promises meet dated data.

A court filing referenced in April 2025 showed nearly 1.99 million pending payment-plan applications [9]. That's the baseline. The question court supervision was supposed to answer: does the curve bend?

• December 1, 2025: NASFAA reported the new ED status report showed only "gradual processing" of the IDR/PSLF backlog [13]. ED had reduced the IDR application backlog by roughly 848,000 between May and December 2025 — real movement, but against a ~2 million starting point [5][13].
• December 16, 2025: CNBC confirmed Trump officials were moving slowly despite court oversight [21].
• December 31, 2025: 83,370 PSLF Buyback applications remained pending, per the year-end status report [7][20].
• March 2026: Court-monitor data showed the PSLF Buyback backlog peaked at 89,720 before declining for the first time [27].

That "first decline" sounds encouraging until you read the r/PSLF community's math on the same filings: at the documented processing rate, clearing the existing buyback backlog would take 35-plus months — even before counting new applications still arriving [27]. For comparison, Forbes had pegged the buyback backlog around 49,000 in May 2025 [14]; it grew, not shrank, through most of the supervised period.

Federal court filings only tell you what the Department of Education reports about itself. Here's what forgiveness has actually looked like across our own client base over the same stretch.

The pattern tracks the national story closely. More than half of all the relief we've confirmed in the past five years landed in a single year — 2023 — when the one-time IDR Account Adjustment and the PSLF limited waiver cleared a historic backlog. Since then our confirmed-relief volume has fallen steadily: the most recent 12-month period is down roughly three-quarters from that 2023 peak, and off nearly 40% from the prior year alone — our lowest in four years. And it runs straight through the very window the AFT settlement and court supervision were meant to accelerate.

Two honest caveats. First, the dates we track reflect the effective date the Department assigns, which is frequently backdated — sometimes by years in borrower-defense cases — so these figures mark when relief became official, not when a family actually stopped carrying the debt. Second, our caseload reflects the borrowers who come to us, not a random sample of all 45 million federal borrowers.

With those caveats, the signal is hard to dismiss: even a firm whose entire job is pushing these cases to the finish line is closing a fraction of what it did at the peak. Court supervision has produced reports and transparency. By our own ledger, it has not restored the pace of relief.

Why the Gap Exists

The sources point to a consistent explanation: court supervision produced transparency, not speed. The settlement obligated the Department to report — and those reports are genuinely useful, which is why we can write this article at all. But reporting a backlog is not the same as clearing it. The Department met its filing obligations while processing at a pace that left the underlying queue enormous [13][21][27].

That gap is precisely why, in February 2026, AFT went back to court. It filed an amended complaint seeking to unblock forgiveness and halt the delays [25], and The College Investor reported the Department was again accused of blocking relief [25]. CNBC noted on February 17, 2026 that forgiveness eligibility was at least reaching more borrowers [22] — but AFT's "round two" filing signals the advocates believe supervision alone hasn't been enough.

What This Means for You Right Now

If you have a borrower defense (school-fraud) claim: Your case is Sweet. The December 2025 ruling blocked further delay [15], so monitor your class status (Exhibit C vs. non-Exhibit C affects timing) and keep documentation current [1][18].

If you're a public service worker waiting on PSLF: Your case is AFT. If you've hit 120 qualifying payments but your forgiveness is stuck — or you have qualifying months that fall during a forbearance gap — PSLF Buyback may apply. Confirm your employment certifications are filed and up to date.

If you completed an IBR term but haven't received cancellation: This is the most underreported injustice in the data [6]. You've earned forgiveness and the system simply hasn't delivered it. Options: file a complaint with the FSA Ombudsman, document the date you completed your term, and seek a legal-aid or nonprofit borrower-advocacy referral.

A note for borrowers weighing a switch between IDR plans to keep payments low: the right move depends on your loan types and qualifying-month history, and the rules differ across plans — including the new Repayment Assistance Plan codified in the 2026 final regulations. Don't guess at formulas from news headlines, which frequently garble them. Verify against the actual plan terms before you consolidate or switch, because consolidation can affect your qualifying-month count.

Your Next Step

Pull your studentaid.gov account, confirm exactly how many qualifying payments you've made, and identify which lawsuit — if any — actually covers your situation. Then bring that record to a qualified advisor before you make any plan change. The court filings prove relief is moving; they also prove it's moving slowly. Knowing precisely where you stand is the difference between waiting blindly and advocating effectively.