PSLF Perjury Attestation 2026: What the New Sworn Statement on Employment Certification Forms Means for Borrowers
Six days before the PSLF employer eligibility rule takes effect, the Department of Education filed an emergency request to add a sworn statement — signed under penalty of perjury — to every Employment Certification Form. Twenty-one states are suing to stop it. Here is what the new attestation actually says, what your HR department is going to do about it, and the single move every PSLF borrower should make in the next five business days.
On June 18, 2026, the Department of Education quietly published a notice in the Federal Register asking the Office of Management and Budget for an "emergency clearance" to revise the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Employment Certification Form. The agency asked OMB to sign off no later than June 26 — tomorrow as this article goes live — so the new form can be in use when the broader PSLF employer eligibility rule takes effect on July 1, 2026.
The substantive change on the form is one line: a new attestation that the employer "has not engaged in any activity that has a substantial illegal purpose on or after July 1, 2026," signed by the employer's authorizing official under penalty of perjury. That one sentence has provoked a 21-state lawsuit, a flurry of late-night HR memos at nonprofits across the country, and a flood of borrower questions about whether years of qualifying payments are suddenly at risk.
They are not. But how you handle the next 30 days matters. Below is the full picture: what the attestation says, who signs it, how your employer is likely to react, why 21 attorneys general are suing, and the certification moves to make before the new form replaces the old one.
What the New Attestation Actually Says
The current PSLF Employment Certification Form has an "employer certification" section signed by an authorizing official confirming the borrower's employment dates, hours worked, and employer status as a 501(c)(3) or other qualifying public-service entity. The new version keeps all of that and adds a separate, sworn statement immediately above the employer signature line.
The exact language in the emergency clearance package says the employer's authorizing official must attest, under penalty of perjury under federal law, that the employer "has not engaged in any activity with a substantial illegal purpose on or after July 1, 2026" as defined in the final rule published May 1, 2026. The form references the same definition used in the rule: activities that breach federal or state law to such an extent that the employer's purpose is "substantially illegal," with examples including aiding illegal immigration and supporting terrorism.
Three things to notice. First, the attestation is forward-looking only — it covers conduct on or after July 1, 2026, not history. Second, it is signed by the employer, not the borrower. The borrower-signature section of the form is unchanged. Third, the perjury language attaches federal criminal liability to a false attestation, the same standard used on federal tax returns and certain immigration forms.
Who Signs — and Why HR Departments Are Nervous
In practice, the "authorizing official" who signs an Employment Certification Form is usually an HR director, payroll manager, benefits coordinator, or, at larger nonprofits, general counsel. Until now, that signature confirmed easily verifiable facts: dates of employment, full-time status, employer EIN. The perjury attestation is different in kind. It asks the signer to vouch, with criminal exposure, for an organizational-wide compliance fact that they may not personally know.
The result inside many nonprofits over the last week has been predictable. HR offices that previously processed certification forms within 48 hours are routing them through legal review. National advocacy groups are circulating sample policies that require HR to obtain board sign-off before signing. A handful of large hospital systems have paused all certification signatures pending guidance from their general counsels. None of this means certification will become impossible. But the certification turnaround that PSLF borrowers were used to — days or a couple of weeks — is going to lengthen for the foreseeable future, and the lengthening starts the moment the new form goes live.
If you are unsure how to read the broader PSLF employer eligibility rule that the attestation operationalizes, our deep-dive on the substantial illegal purpose rule walks through the five activity categories and the 10-year disqualification window.
Why 21 States Are Suing
A coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia filed suit earlier this year challenging the PSLF employer rule on multiple grounds. With the July 1 effective date now days away, the states have renewed their motion for the court to vacate the rule, or at least enjoin it, before it takes effect. Two arguments matter most for borrowers.
First, the states argue the Secretary's new authority to strip employers of PSLF eligibility based on "substantial illegal purpose" exceeds statutory authority under the Higher Education Act and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness statute, both of which define qualifying employment in terms of organizational status (501(c)(3), government, qualifying nonprofit) rather than ongoing organizational conduct. Second, the perjury attestation, the states argue, creates a chilling effect: HR officials at lawful nonprofits will refuse to sign rather than risk criminal liability over a definition the Department itself has acknowledged is fact-specific.
The litigation is real, but borrowers should plan as if the rule and the form change will both take effect on schedule. Even if a court eventually blocks part of the rule, the form revision could remain in place separately under the Paperwork Reduction Act emergency clearance the Department requested. The safest assumption is that the form changes on July 1 unless and until a court orders otherwise.
What Past Payments Are Protected
This is the question that has filled PSLF Reddit threads since the Federal Register notice dropped. The answer is unambiguous: any qualifying payment you made on or before June 30, 2026, while you were employed full-time by an employer that was eligible at the time, is permanently counted toward your 120 payments. Nothing in the new rule or the new form retroactively disqualifies past payments. The Department has confirmed this in writing in the rule preamble and in subsequent guidance.
What the rule and the perjury attestation affect is forward-looking certification. Months of employment from July 1, 2026 onward will only count if your employer is then eligible and willing to certify on the new form. If you have already accumulated qualifying payments under PSLF, those are locked in. If you are still working toward 120, the question is whether your employer will keep certifying after July 1.
The One Move to Make in the Next Five Business Days
File a PSLF Employment Certification Form on the current version, today, for every period through June 30, 2026 that is not yet certified. This is the single highest-value action a PSLF borrower can take in the next week. Here is why.
A certification filed on the current form before the form revision takes effect locks in your employment record for the months it covers without requiring your employer to make any sworn statement. The Department has confirmed it will continue to process forms filed on the old version after July 1 as long as they were signed before the changeover. You eliminate the perjury-attestation question entirely for any month covered by a pre-July-1 certification.
A practical workflow for the next five business days:
Day 1 (today): Log into StudentAid.gov, open the PSLF Help Tool, and pull your current employment certification status. Note the last month for which each of your employers has been certified.
Day 2: Generate a fresh PSLF Employment Certification Form (current version) for every uncertified period through June 30, 2026. If you currently have one employer, that is one form. If you held two simultaneous part-time public-service jobs (see our guide on combining hours across multiple PSLF employers), generate one form per employer.
Day 3: Hand-deliver or email the forms to your HR contact with a short note explaining the timing. Most HR departments are still processing the current form on familiar terms; the bottleneck arrives on July 1.
Days 4–5: Follow up. If your HR contact has already adopted a wait-and-see posture, ask whether the form can be signed under the current procedure for periods ending June 30, 2026 (the answer should be yes — that is by definition pre-rule activity).
If you cannot get a signature in five business days, do not panic. The form is still valid as long as your employer eventually signs the pre-July-1 version and you submit it through StudentAid.gov.
What to Do If Your Employer Refuses
A handful of large employers are signaling they may pause all certification signatures during the transition. If your HR department refuses to sign the current form — even though the perjury language does not yet apply — you have two options.
The first is to escalate within the organization. Cite the rule preamble's statement that pre-July-1 employment is unaffected and ask for the current-version form, which contains no perjury language. The Department of Education's PSLF Help Tool generates the correct version automatically; HR is not signing anything unusual.
The second is to plan for self-certification after July 1. The Department has signaled it will continue to accept supplementary documentation — pay stubs, W-2s, employer letters, payroll system screenshots — where an employer declines to sign the certification form. Processing self-certified applications is slower, but the path remains open. Pull your last 12 months of pay stubs now, save them to a secure folder, and request a written employment-verification letter (separate from the PSLF form) from HR. Most HR systems can issue an employment-verification letter without involving legal, because no PSLF-specific language is on it.
How the Attestation Interacts With RAP and IDR
The perjury attestation has nothing to do with which repayment plan you are on. RAP, IBR, PAYE (closing July 1), ICR, and the new Tiered Standard Plan all qualify for PSLF if the underlying employment qualifies. The attestation is purely about employment certification, not payment certification.
That said, if you are still finalizing your repayment plan choice during the SAVE transition, the attestation deadline gives you one more reason not to wait. Use our PSLF Calculator to confirm how many qualifying months you have on the books today, then use the RAP Calculator and the Plan Comparison Tool to lock in a plan that keeps you eligible after July 1.
If you spent any of the last 18 months in SAVE administrative forbearance and you are short on qualifying payments, the perjury attestation does not change the math on buyback either — but read our coverage of the PSLF buyback calculation change first to understand how the cost has shifted.
A Practical Timeline
| Date | Event | Borrower Action |
|---|---|---|
| June 18, 2026 | Federal Register emergency clearance request published | Pull current certification status |
| Now through June 30, 2026 | Old form still accepted; rule not yet effective | File certification on the old form for every uncertified period |
| June 26, 2026 | Target date for OMB sign-off on form revision | Watch StudentAid.gov for form changeover |
| July 1, 2026 | Employer eligibility rule + new form effective | If no court order, plan for slower certification turnaround |
| Ongoing | State litigation pending | Monitor; certification on old form is already protected |
Dates current as of June 25, 2026. The court could enjoin part of the rule before July 1; the form revision could still take effect separately.
What Not to Do
A few mistakes to avoid in the next 30 days:
- Do not wait for the lawsuit to play out. Certification on the current form costs you nothing and locks in months that you are already entitled to.
- Do not ask your HR department to sign a draft of the new form early. The new perjury attestation has no legal effect for pre-July-1 employment; asking HR to attest to it pre-rule creates unnecessary risk and confusion.
- Do not assume the rule will be blocked. Plan for the rule and the form to take effect; if a court intervenes, the disruption to your certification timeline is smaller than if it does not.
- Do not skip the borrower portion of the form. Even with the new attestation, the borrower-signature requirement is unchanged. Forms missing the borrower signature are rejected before HR ever sees them.
- Do not assume self-certification is the easy path. If you can get an employer signature on the current form, do it. Self-certification with supplementary documents is a backstop, not a first choice.
Bottom Line
The PSLF perjury attestation does not change the law of who qualifies for forgiveness, and it has zero retroactive effect on payments already made. What it does change is the operational reality of getting employment certified after July 1, 2026. HR departments that signed the current form within days will now route the new form through legal review. Some employers will refuse to sign for periods of doubt. The best response for borrowers is the simplest one: pre-certify every uncertified month of employment through June 30, 2026 on the current form, this week, before the changeover. Five business days of paperwork now buys you years of cleaner record-keeping later, and it forecloses every question the perjury language raises.
If you want to confirm your qualifying payment count before you submit, plug your numbers into our PSLF Calculator. If you need to choose between RAP, IBR, and a Standard plan in the same window, the Plan Comparison Tool will walk you through it. And if SAVE forbearance months are part of your record, the SAVE Transition Guide covers the broader exit playbook.
Privacy Note
All calculations happen in your browser. We never collect your data, loan balances, or personal information.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial or legal advice. The official PSLF rules and forms are administered by the U.S. Department of Education and your federal loan servicer. Consult a financial aid advisor or your servicer for guidance specific to your situation. Data current as of June 25, 2026.