Legal Advocacy

Some of our legal advocacy letters can be shared publicly.

Our court filings to protect veterans, servicemembers, and military families.

Our legal team provides submissions to college accreditors, documenting our findings about specific colleges, including our research findings, student veteran complaints, and whistleblower concerns.

• Our Third Party Comment to Higher Learning Commission regarding University of Phoenix | Nov. 2018
  • Our memo outlining HLC’s standards and the ways UOP has violated those standards
  • Yale Law School memo describing hundreds of student veteran complaints received by VES
  • Affidavit from Veterans Education Success President Wofford regarding the concerns expressed by, and documents received from, four UOP whistleblowers
  • Letter from a UOP whistleblower sharing concerns
• Our Third Party Comment to WASC Senior College and University Commission regarding Ashford University | Dec. 20, 2017
  • Our Submission of Additional Information to Ashford’s Accreditor| Feb. 22, 2018

We serve as a solo amicus in a case regarding the rights of whistleblowers under the federal False Claims Act: 

• Court recognition of Veterans Education Success’ amicus curiae filing (Oct. 2017) (here)
• Stephens Institute’s Reply Brief (Sept. 2017) (here)
• Motion for permission to file amicus brief (Aug. 9, 2017) (here)
• Amicus brief filed with the 9th Circuit (Aug. 7, 2017) (here)

We won two amicus cases to protect students’ rights to sue loan servicing companies that fail to comply with Public Service Loan Forgiveness – which is important to veterans and servicemembers and to recruiting and retention by the U.S. military, Veterans Affairs Department, and veterans organizations.

• Our brief in Reavis v. PHEAA (Dec. 16, 2019) (here). On July 14 ,2020, the Montana Supreme Court agreed with us! (here)
• Our brief in Lawson-Ross v. Great Lakes Higher Education Corp. (Dec. 10, 2018) (here). On April 10, 2020, the 11th Circuit Court agreed with us! (here)

We helped ITT Tech and Corinthian students, working closely with several hundred individuals to file claims with the Court. 

We also supported lawyers at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, who represent a class of all 750,000 former ITT Tech students (including veterans) who attended in the last 10 years:

• ITT Class Action Settlement:  US Court awards financial recompense to ITT students (Jan. 2018) (here). Students win $168 million in student debt cancellation (June 2019) (here)
• ITT Tech Student Class Complaint (Jan. 2017) (here)
• Veterans Education Success President Carrie Wofford’s Affidavit (here)
• US Securities & Exchange Commission rejects settlement terms for ITT Tech Executives who defrauded investors (Aug. 2017) (here)

We’ve joined several amici curiae briefs regarding the Gainful Employment rule at the US Department of Education that weeds out poor performing career college programs:

• • March 2018 (here)
  • March 2015 (here)
  • November 2015 (here)

We file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to government agencies to help expose important facts to protect veterans, servicemembers, and military families.

Veterans Education Success works with federal and state law enforcement to protect the rights of veterans, service-members, military family members and survivors.