A. Wayne Johnson’s Student Loan Class Action Lawsuit

A. Wayne Johnson’s student loan class action lawsuit, filed in late October 2025 in federal court in Atlanta, accuses the U.S. Department of Education and the three major credit bureaus of wrongly reporting millions of federal student loan borrowers as delinquent or in default. The proposed class covers anyone reported as seriously delinquent or in default on federal student loans since January 1, 2025, and the complaint seeks $100,000 per class member along with removal of the negative credit reporting.¹

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The complaint names four defendants: the U.S. Department of Education (with Secretary Linda McMahon in her official capacity), Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It alleges willful violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.²

The theory is straightforward. The Department has been marking borrowers as seriously delinquent or in default while, according to the complaint, lacking the capacity to help those same borrowers enroll in repayment plans or reach basic customer support. The complaint attributes that gap to mass layoffs at the Department, reduced servicer capacity, and insufficient funding.¹ The credit bureaus are accused of publishing that data without verifying whether it was accurate.²

Attorney M. Devlin Cooper, who is lead counsel, has said the faulty reporting could saddle roughly 20 million Americans with higher interest rates for the rest of their lives. The complaint projects collective damage reaching $2 trillion by April 2026.³

Who Qualifies for the Class

The proposed class is defined broadly: any borrower reported as seriously delinquent or in default on federal student loans since January 1, 2025.³ The class has not yet been certified by the court, so at this stage the definition describes who the plaintiffs are asking to represent, not a group with confirmed legal status.

The relief sought has two parts. One is monetary: $100,000 per class member. The other is corrective: removal of all negative credit reporting tied to the challenged conduct.¹

How to Register

The lawsuit maintains a website at studentloanlegalaction.org with a registration page for borrowers who may qualify. Detailed instructions for joining have not been publicly laid out beyond that registration step.⁴ Registering is not the same as being a certified class member; a federal judge would need to certify the class before anyone is formally bound by or entitled to relief from the case.

Why the Case Was Filed Now

Federal student loan collections restarted on May 5, 2025, ending the pause that had been in place since March 2020. The Department’s collection tools include the Treasury Offset Program, which intercepts tax refunds and portions of Social Security benefits, and administrative wage garnishment.⁵

By April 2025, more than five million borrowers were in default and another four million were in late-stage delinquency, with the Department projecting that nearly ten million could be in default within months. Only 38% of borrowers were current. A processing pause on income-driven repayment applications, in effect since August 2024, had left 1.9 million borrowers unable to begin repayment at all.⁶ The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that more than nine million borrowers would see significant credit score drops in the first half of 2025, with some falling more than 150 points.⁵

On January 16, 2026, the Department announced a temporary halt to involuntary collection methods, pausing wage garnishment and tax refund seizures while it rolls out repayment reforms under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. No end date was set, though new repayment options are scheduled to launch July 1, 2026.⁷ The pause does not stop credit reporting. The Department’s announcement stated that it continues to report defaults, which “may adversely impact borrower credit reports.”⁸ That distinction is central to the lawsuit: the credit damage the complaint targets is continuing even while paycheck and refund seizures are on hold.

Who Is A. Wayne Johnson

Johnson is the former chief operating officer of Federal Student Aid, the office that manages the government’s student loan portfolio. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appointed him in June 2017, when the portfolio was valued at roughly $1.4 trillion.⁹ He resigned on October 24, 2019, and publicly called for canceling up to $50,000 in federal student debt per borrower, describing the system as “fundamentally broken” and saying his time inside the Department had convinced him he was helping “make a very broken, flawed system operate more efficiently” while putting more people into “a problematic situation.”¹⁰

His academic background is in the same area. He holds a Ph.D. in higher education leadership from Mercer University; his 2016 dissertation studied private student loan indebtedness and concluded that financial aid officers at the university he examined were perceived as “willfully negligent” about loan terms.¹¹ In the current litigation, Johnson is listed as a co-manager of the lawsuit rather than as legal counsel, and he is financing the case directly.³

The Lawyer Handling the Case

Lead counsel is M. Devlin Cooper, founding and managing partner of Cooper, Barton & Cooper in Macon, Georgia. Cooper holds a law degree from George Mason University with a regulatory law specialty, has tried more than fifteen cases to jury verdict in Georgia, and was appointed a Special Assistant Attorney General by Georgia Attorney General Samuel S. Olens in 2013.¹² The firm practices in business litigation, eminent domain, personal injury, and mass torts, and does not advertise specific experience in Fair Credit Reporting Act litigation.¹³

Where the Case Stands

The lawsuit is in its early stages. As of January 2026, the Department of Education had not publicly responded to the allegations and had not replied to media requests for comment. No class certification ruling or substantive motion decisions have been reported.³ Any borrower who thinks they may fit the proposed class definition can register through the case’s website while those preliminary questions are still ahead of the court.⁴

1
Business Insider. Trump Student Loan Official Lawsuit Unfair Credit Reporting Debt Collections
2
CNBC. Student Loan Class Action Lawsuit
3
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Millions of Student Loan Borrowers Are Delinquent Lawsuit Blames the Feds
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Student Loan Legal Action. Information
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Economic Policy Institute. Department of Education Resumes Student Loan Collections on Defaulted Loans
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U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Department of Education Begin Federal Student Loan Collections Other Actions Help Borrowers Get Back Repayment
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ACA International. 2026 Student Loan Update Federal Collections Paused for System Overhaul
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U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Department of Education Delays Involuntary Collections Amid Ongoing Student Loan Repayment Improvements
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Inside Higher Ed. New Head Federal Student Aid Announced
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CNBC. Ex-Trump Official Who Wants Student Debt Canceled on Fixing Loan System
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Opportunity America Online. DeVos Appointee to Head Student Loan Program Has Done His Homework
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Student Loan Legal Action. Managers
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Cooper, Barton & Cooper. Cooper, Barton and Cooper