As Missouri’s Solicitor General, Divine Has Repeatedly Demonstrated a Disregard for Facts and Willingness to Manipulate and Break Established Judicial Doctrine to Deprive Student Loan Borrowers of Needed Relief
June 4, 2025 | WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a hearing later today, Joshua Divine, chief legal architect behind the Republican states-led opposition to the Biden Administration’s efforts to provide tens of millions of borrowers with student debt relief, will appear before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary as nominee for a federal district judge in Missouri. If confirmed, Divine, who is in his thirties, will receive lifetime appointment, despite a track record of abusing the legal system to achieve his ideological and political goals against student loan borrowers.
In response, Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) Legal Director Winston Berkman-Breen released the following statement:
“Josh Divine built his political brand off the suffering of tens of millions of student loan borrowers across this country, and now the Trump Administration is rewarding him with a position that will let him enshrine his personal ideologies into law. Time and time again in his lawsuits challenging legal student loan payment and relief programs, Divine took extreme positions at odds with traditional judicial interpretations related to injury, standing, and venue. Because of Divine, millions of student loan borrowers remain buried in crushing debt.
“Divine’s actions exceeded the bounds of zealous advocacy and were a direct affront to judicial procedure. Americans deserve a judge who will review the facts of the case before them and apply the law under the Constitution and as passed by Congress—not an ideologue who will manipulate those laws to obtain the outcome he prefers.”
Background
While working for the Missouri Attorney General, Divine was responsible for leading the effort to eliminate vital relief and affordable repayment options for millions of borrowers struggling to afford to repay their loans. As a result of Divine’s relentless attacks on borrowers, millions remain in limbo, threatening their financial security.
In 2023, Missouri led the efforts at the Supreme Court in Nebraska v. Biden to invalidate President Biden’s plan to cancel debts for millions of low- and middle-income borrowers. As Solicitor General, Divine has repeatedly misrepresented the majority’s determination in Nebraska that harm to the student loan servicer MOHELA is harm to the state of Missouri sufficient to confer standing in federal court, asserting instead that MOHELA enjoys sovereign immunity as an arm of the state. Several courts have rejected this claim, which if accepted, would immunize the private company from judicial oversight when it violates student loan borrowers’ rights.
In October 2023, Divine served as an alternate negotiator on behalf of state attorneys general in the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking on proposed rules for student loan debt relief. Despite agreeing to the dates of the negotiations, Divine skipped the first of three week-long sessions, during which time additional negotiators were added. After an untimely and unsuccessful attempt to add a negotiator seat to represent “taxpayers” generally—although all existing negotiators were U.S. taxpayers—Divine resigned in protest rather than engage in the rulemaking process in good faith.
In support of his bid to include a “taxpayer” negotiator, Divine shared that “in the last few weeks, a number of constituents have reached out to provide feedback” to their office regarding their concerns about student debt relief. Documents received from a Sunshine request reveal that the office heard much more support for student debt relief and frustration over MOHELA than concerns about debt relief.
In April 2024, Divine coordinated 18 Republican state attorneys general to challenge President Biden’s Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, the Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which would have been the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever and from which 8 million borrowers had already benefited for months. In doing so, he asserted that the fact that borrowers, including his constituents, might benefit from ultimately having their loans paid down or forgiven was a form of harm to the state of Missouri. He also falsely represented that the SAVE plan was the result of the debt relief rulemaking from which he had resigned. The SAVE rulemaking took place in 2021.
Later in 2024, Divine did end up challenging the debt relief rulemaking, but did so before the rule had even been finalized, in a departure from well-established administrative law, which requires a final agency action before any challenge can be made. He also attempted to forum shop by bringing the case in a federal district court in the Brunswick Division of the Southern District of Georgia. The lawsuit was promptly transferred by a Republican-appointed judge to the federal District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, on the grounds that the State of Georgia had no standing to participate in the lawsuit and therefore could not justify Missouri’s choice of venue in the state.
Further Reading
SBPC press release on Court’s Rejection of Missouri’s Attempt to Forum Shop: Republican-Appointed Judge Spurns Missouri AG’s Attempt to Block Future Student Debt Relief in Georgia Court, Sends Case Back to Missouri
SBPC report on student loan borrower complaints to Missouri Attorney General: MO Borrowers, MO Problems: How One MAGA Attorney General Tried to Break the Student Loan System and Drive His Own Constituents Deeper Into Debt
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About Student Borrower Protection Center
Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) is a nonprofit organization focused on eliminating the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. We engage in advocacy, policymaking, and litigation strategy to rein in industry abuses, protect borrowers’ rights, and advance racial and economic justice.
Learn more at protectborrowers.org or follow SBPC on Twitter @theSBPC.