Too Much Student Loan Debt License to Work DENIED.

On January eleven, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a single unlucky law college graduate is carrying as well considerably 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 immediately after functioning as a stockbroker in Arizona for 5 many years.

Even though in law college, Griffin amassed far more than $150,000 in debt from student loans. He was previously saddled with about $20,000 in school loan debt from his undergraduate scientific studies, and he was carrying an added $16,500 in credit card debt. Immediately after law college, he was unable to come across total-time operate and took a element-time work 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.

Right 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 program to satisfy his fiscal obligations" and repay his college loans. In the courts view, Griffins debt degree and his shaky economic predicament 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 ought to demonstrate prior to taking the state bar examination.

The board did advocate, even so, that Griffin be allowed to reapply for the bar examination in February 2011. In purchase to be accepted, Griffin would ought to present some variety of debt management program to the court, setting out the arrangements hes producing 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 the two denied law licenses to applicants who defaulted on significant debts from school and graduate loans.

This emerging trend of denying a specialist 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 right after 18 months of attempts to get the nurses into a repayment strategy of some variety for their defaulted loans. Some of these nurses, state officials noted, had been in default for as a lot of as eight many years.

The Tennessee Division of Wellness reports that given that it relieved the 42 nurses of their credentials to perform, about half of them have entered a student loan repayment strategy, and their licenses have been reinstated.

Withholding or revoking a skilled license given that the holder has defaulted on college loans could look harsh, but federal law permits states to withhold expert licensing credentials from defaulted borrowers and to deny previously-licensed specialists a license renewal on the basis of a defaulted federal training loan.