The American Bar Association has come out ahead in its legal fight to ensure that all of its  employees qualify for the federal government's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

The ABA has been battling the U.S. Department of Education in court since December 2016, when it filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia after several employees were informed by the servicer of their government-issued student loans that the ABA is not an eligible employer under the loan forgiveness program.

But the ABA said this week that the loan servicer has reversed course and sent letters to those borrowers stating that it had made an error and that the ABA is a qualified employer for the program. That decision paves the way for any ABA employee to have their federal loans forgiven after 10 years, provided they meet the many criteria laid out under the program.

It also could have implications beyond the ABA, with more lawyers and other public services workers in nontraditional settings becoming eligible for forgiveness. (It's unclear how many people are on track for public service loan forgiveness, though as of March 73,554 had applied for a loan discharge. That figure is expected to increase rapidly in the coming years.)

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows borrowers to discharge their remaining federal loan balances after 10 years in qualified public service jobs and 10 years of payments on the loan, among other conditions. It was enacted in 2007 as a way to encourage borrowers to pursue public service careers, which often are less lucrative than those in the private sector.

"We are gratified that several affected employees have been notified their work with the American Bar Association qualifies as public service work under PSLF," ABA executive director Jack Rives said in a prepared statement.

The determination by FedLoan Servicing that the ABA employees in question qualify for loan forgiveness could have positive implications for other legal services organizations, according to Ropes & Gray partner Chong Park, who has been representing the ABA.

Two of the four name plaintiffs in the 2016 lawsuit are former ABA employees who worked on pro bono initiatives, while the remaining two worked for other nonprofit groups: The American Immigration Lawyers Association and Vietnam Veterans of America. Those employees have also had their loan payments credited toward their 10-year loan forgiveness, according to the FedLoan servicing letters, which indicates that the Education Department is taking a more inclusive approach to which employers qualify for forgiveness. Several employees of the ABA and those two other organizations that were not plaintiffs in the suit have also been told that they qualify for the program, Park said.

"I think this has broad consequences and ramifications for public interest employees across the nation," Park said in an interview Tuesday. "This basically affects private, nonprofit organizations that provide any of a list of qualifying services, which includes public interest law services, early childhood education and on and on."

The plaintiffs had already seen early success in court. The 2016 complaint argues the that Education Department unlawfully changed the criteria for qualified employment under the program partway through, leaving the plaintiffs—several of whom had initially been told their jobs qualified—out in the cold.

A federal judge largely agreed, issuing an opinion in February that the Education Department indeed had changed the criteria for forgiveness without notice midstream and must reconsider the applications of three of the four plaintiffs. (All four have now been told they are eligible, according to the ABA.)

The Education Department opted not to appeal that decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of the District of Columbia.

Many questions remain about the wider Public Interest Loan Forgiveness program, however. The first cohort of borrowers became eligible to apply for forgiveness in 2018, but government figures show that only 1% of those who applied last year were approved. The approval rate was similarly low in the most recent data, released in March.

But experts have cautioned that approval rates should increase over time, as relatively few borrowers from the early groups took out the right type of loan to qualify for forgiveness and that accurate information about the program was scarce in its early days.