If You're Chasing PSLF, File the Employment Certification This Week.

Update, October 23, 2026: The government gave up. On October 21, Justice Department lawyers signed a joint stipulation with the nonprofits to dismiss the First Circuit appeal in National Council of Nonprofits v. McMahon, each side paying its own costs. Inside Higher Ed reported that the government moved that Wednesday to dismiss its appeals of both June rulings, with a third appeal still pending in the First Circuit. On October 22, California’s attorney general said the administration had dropped its appeal in the 22-state case too. No explanation was offered. Translation: the June 30 rulings stand and the employer rule is dead. Dead for now, though. The Department could still propose an amended version, which means a new rulemaking, not a revival. Nothing changes for you except the excuse. If an HR office is still sitting on your form “pending the appeal,” there is no appeal.

Update, September 28, 2026: The rule this article was written around never took effect, and we had that wrong. On June 30, 2026, one day before the July 1 effective date, federal district courts in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia vacated the Education Department’s PSLF employer rule. Judge Myong J. Joun called it contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, and a First Amendment violation. The Department said it plainly in a Federal Register notice on September 22: “On Tuesday, June 30, 2026, a Federal judge vacated the rule; one day prior to the rule becoming effective. The Department is now removing the attestation from the PSLF form in order to comply with the court order.” Your employer is no longer being asked to swear to anything about illegal activity. If an employer stalled over that attestation this summer, ask again this week. It’s gone.

If you’re on Public Service Loan Forgiveness and you haven’t filed an Employment Certification Form this year, file one this week. The reason is no longer the rule. It’s that an uncertified month is a month the Department has no record of, and this program has spent two years proving how fast its records can go dark.

Here’s the fight the form got caught in. The Department published a final rule on October 31, 2025, adding a new way for an employer to lose “qualifying employer” status: activity with a “substantial illegal purpose.” Its stated examples were aiding illegal immigration and supporting terrorism. Its own estimate was that fewer than ten employers a year would be disqualified.

Small number. The problem was you don’t get told your organization is on the list until it is.

On June 18, the Department published the revised Employment Certification Form to match, and that’s the version that hit HR desks. Your employer had to attest, under penalty of perjury, that it had not engaged in “substantial illegal purpose” activity. That’s a big ask, and some HR departments simply stopped signing.

Twelve days later two judges threw the rule out. The Massachusetts court held it violated the First Amendment by “conditioning PSLF eligibility on an organization’s speech, advocacy, or viewpoint.” The D.C. court held the Secretary can’t “pick and choose” among the Section 501(c)(3) organizations Congress already made eligible. Then it took the Department three months to take the sentence off the form.

Here’s the mechanic that outlives all of it. Certified months are recorded months. Uncertified months are a promise that somebody at your old employer will still be reachable, and still have payroll records, whenever you finally ask. For a borrower five years into a ten-year march, that’s roughly sixty months sitting in a filing cabinet you don’t control.

On a $60,000 balance, that paperwork is the difference between $0 forgiven and everything forgiven.

Do this now, in this order.

Log into StudentAid.gov and pull an Employment Certification Form. File one covering every month you’ve worked at your current employer through today. If you’ve never filed one, file it once. If you filed one last year, file another. There’s no cost, no cap, and no penalty for filing again. Check the education hub if you want the rest of the repayment picture.

If an employer refused to certify you this summer over the attestation, go back to them now with the Department’s September 22 notice. The sentence they balked at is being deleted.

If you were on SAVE, note the plan was vacated on March 10, 2026. You should have been notified to switch. RAP is a qualifying PSLF plan and became available July 1. IBR is still an option. Don’t sit in forbearance while you decide. Forbearance months don’t count toward PSLF.

If you’ve already hit 120 qualifying payments, apply for forgiveness now. Don’t wait for the annual cycle to come around.

The vacated rule sat in 34 CFR 685.219 for anyone who wants the citation. The government dropped its First and D.C. Circuit appeals in October 2026, so the district court rulings are final unless the Department starts over with a new rule.

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