August, 2026
Washington and Lincoln — The several cases that I initiated in federal court in 2007, about which I have previously written in multiple blog posts, have taken on lives of their own, and all for the better.
Our Fourth Circuit case against state-created student loan giant PHEAA, stripping it of sovereign immunity and allowing it to be sued by its victims, has been cited as precedent in the 2024 MOHELA case in the Tenth Circuit, among other courts. The defining factors for sovereign immunity that our case established were further streamlined by the U.S. Supreme Court this year in its unanimous 2026 Galette decision. The resulting restriction on misuse of the Eleventh Amendment will benefit millions in many economic sectors and will be a bulwark against corruption. It should be of special help to those whose Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) accounts have been mishandled by MOHELA.
For anyone who may be writing an academic or law journal article about the sovereign immunity cases, there is a noteworthy backstory about how PHEAA's stubborn misbehavior helped us define the determining factors. We shaped them around our request that the court sanction PHEAA officials for perjury. Which it did. PHEAA had to concede a factor that was crucial to our success in the case. Indeed we won on the merits, but with help from court sanctions.
As to our several additional cases against for-profit lenders, they were dormant after their 2010 settlements until filmmaker Michael Camoin in 2023 asked the federal Eastern District of Virginia to unseal several redacted documents related to the lenders' false claims. After much back and forth with the Fourth Circuit, Camoin prevailed in what is a landmark decision against corporate "settle and seal" strategies that keep the public from seeing what happened. Camoin is a huge expansion of First Amendment press freedoms and another blow against corruption. It is being cited in other circuits to open records the public has a right to see.
Again, there is an unusual backstory, quite unknown to the public. The district court, after its reversal by the appeals court, was unable to produce the materials at issue. Although the Oberg records were eventually found, as it turns out lost or mishandled documents may be a broader problem in many courts.*
Two decades have passed since we decided to bring the cases. Fortuitous outcomes were never assured. These cases now have taken on lives of their own in constitutional jurisprudence, and their future looks bright. May they be ready to meet the challenges of a new and dangerous wave of corruption that now threatens the rule of law as never before.
_____________________________________
