Too Much Student Loan Debt License to Work DENIED.

On January eleven, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that one particular unlucky law college graduate is carrying also significantly student loan debt to be permitted to hold a license to practice law in the state.

Hassan Jonathan Griffin, the topic of the ruling, graduated from Ohio State Universitys Moritz College of Law in 2008 right after operating as a stockbroker in Arizona for 5 many years.

Although in law college, Griffin amassed a lot more than $150,000 in debt from student loans. He was currently saddled with about $20,000 in school loan debt from his undergraduate research, and he was carrying an further $16,500 in credit card debt. Right after law college, he was unable to locate complete-time perform and took a part-time occupation in the Franklin County public defenders workplace, earning just $twelve an hour.

Griffin applied in November 2009 to take the Ohio bar examination in February 2010, but his student loan debt disclosure on the examination application triggered an investigation by the State Bar Associations Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness.

Immediately after the boards report, the Ohio Supreme Court denied Griffins application to take the Ohio bar examination on the grounds that he had no "feasible strategy to satisfy his economic obligations" and repay his college loans. In the courts view, Griffins debt degree and his shaky fiscal circumstance left him lacking "the requisite character, fitness, and moral qualifications for admission to the practice of law" -- qualifications that, under Ohio state guidelines, applicants to the Ohio bar need to demonstrate prior to taking the state bar examination.

The board did advise, nonetheless, that Griffin be allowed to reapply for the bar examination in February 2011. In purchase to be accepted, Griffin would ought to present some sort of debt management program to the court, setting out the arrangements hes generating to repay his student loans.

Griffin is far from the only would-be lawyer to run afoul of state licensure laws due to unpaid college loans. In the final two many years, Texas and New York have each denied law licenses to applicants who defaulted on huge debts from school and graduate loans.

This emerging trend of denying a skilled license to an applicant on the basis of extreme student loan debt hasnt been restricted to the legal occupation. In October, the state of Tennessee revoked the licenses of 42 nurses who had defaulted on their school loans.

Tennessee officials say that their move to revoke the nurses licenses came only immediately after 18 months of attempts to get the nurses into a repayment program of some sort for their defaulted loans. Some of these nurses, state officials noted, had been in default for as numerous as eight many years.

The Tennessee Division of Wellbeing reports that considering that it relieved the 42 nurses of their credentials to operate, about half of them have entered a student loan repayment program, and their licenses have been reinstated.

Withholding or revoking a specialist license considering that the holder has defaulted on college loans may possibly seem to be harsh, but federal law makes it possible for states to withhold specialist licensing credentials from defaulted borrowers and to deny previously-licensed pros a license renewal on the basis of a defaulted federal schooling loan.