New Bill + 24-State Lawsuit Push to Classify Nursing as a ‘Professional’ Degree

Three weeks after the Department of Education finalized its RISE rule and officially kept nursing off the “professional degree” list, two major counteroffensives landed on the same day — one in Congress, one in federal court.

On Tuesday, May 19, lawmakers introduced the bipartisan Nursing is a Professional Degree Act in both chambers of Congress. Hours later, a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit challenging the same rule in court.

The fight over whether nursing counts as a “profession” — at least in the eyes of the federal government — is far from over.

If you’ve been following this story, you know the stakes. If you’re just tuning in, here’s the short version.

The RISE rule — the Department of Education’s implementation of the student loan provisions in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — was finalized April 30 and subjects graduate nursing students to a $20,500 annual federal loan cap and a $100,000 lifetime limit starting July 1, 2026. Students in programs the DoED designates as “professional” — law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and others — face a $50,000 annual cap and a $200,000 lifetime limit. Nursing didn’t make the list.

When we polled 2,312 nurses about the policy, 59% said it made them less likely to pursue a graduate degree. At a moment when demand for advanced practice nurses has never been higher, that’s a number the nursing workforce can’t afford.

The American Nurses Association called the final rule “profoundly dismaying,” noting it ignored over 245,000 petition signatures and tens of thousands of public comments. Now, given that six months of advocacy through official channels failed, nursing’s allies are trying a different approach — two of them, simultaneously.

The Nursing is a Professional Degree Act does exactly what its name says. It amends the definition of “professional student” in the Higher Education Act of 1965 to include post-baccalaureate nursing degrees — MSN, DNP, DNAP, and PhD — restoring access to the $50,000/$200,000 federal loan caps.

In the Senate, the bill is led by Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), who co-chair the Senate Nursing Caucus, with Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as co-sponsors. In the House, the companion bill was introduced by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA-02) — a geriatric nurse practitioner and Navy veteran who, as we’ve covered previously, has been one of the most active nurse-legislators on the Hill throughout the 119th Congress. Kiggans has been pushing back on nursing’s exclusion since November 2025, making this bill the natural culmination of more than six months of her advocacy on the issue.

The bill is backed by more than 250 organizations, including the ANA, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, and the National League for Nursing.

“Republicans and Democrats alike have sounded the alarm over changes that make student loans for nurses more expensive, which threaten the future of the nursing workforce,” Merkley said in a statement. “Our simple and straightforward bill corrects this wrong.”

Wicker added: “It is imperative that Congress address the nursing shortage across the United States… Classifying post-baccalaureate nursing degrees as professional degrees is a common-sense step to protect the future of nursing education and our healthcare system.”

The bill is bipartisan, bicameral, and has broad organizational support — which matters. Whether it can actually move through a Congress that passed the underlying law (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) in the first place is a harder question. Getting a legislative fix enacted will be an uphill climb, but the bill’s sponsors have demonstrated staying power on this issue for months, and a Senate bill with two Republican co-sponsors in Lummis and Murkowski has more traction than most.

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On the same day the bill was introduced, New York Attorney General Letitia James co-led a coalition of 24 states and D.C. in filing a federal lawsuit to block the RISE rule. The suit covers a wide range of health care and professional fields excluded from the DoED’s approved list — nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant studies, social work, and others — arguing the Trump administration unlawfully narrowed a definition that Congress never intended to restrict.

“You should not have to be wealthy to serve your community as a nurse, physical therapist, or physician assistant,” James said. “Higher education is expensive, and our health care system is already under immense strain. This rule will shut talented people out of critical professions and leave communities with fewer health care providers they desperately need.”

The coalition makes two distinct legal arguments:

1. The rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act by directly contradicting what Congress actually passed — the DoED has acknowledged that some excluded programs meet the statutory definition of a “professional” degree, but classified them otherwise anyway.
2. The rule unlawfully strips grandfathering protections Congress intended to provide: under the DoED’s rule, students who transfer schools or temporarily withdraw and re-enroll — even to continue the exact same program — lose their interim loan access protections. The coalition argues that restriction has no basis in the law.

One of the more striking arguments in the suit: the DoED’s list of approved professional degrees was drawn from a regulation unchanged since the 1950s, before modern graduate nursing education existed in any meaningful form.

Nursing wasn’t excluded because someone decided it didn’t qualify — it was excluded because no one updated a list from an era when there was nothing to add.

Where Things Stand

The rule is still set to take effect July 1, 2026. Neither the bill nor the lawsuit automatically delays it — a court would need to issue a preliminary injunction for any pause to occur, and that’s not guaranteed.

Graduate nursing students who are currently enrolled and borrowing may be eligible for the interim exception that preserves access to higher loan limits for up to three years, as long as they remain continuously enrolled. If you’re in that situation, now is the time to confirm your status with your program’s financial aid office.

We’ve been tracking this story since it first broke in November 2025. What started as a proposed rulemaking has moved through a DoED fact sheet, a 245,000-signature petition, a public comment period in which opposition ran nearly unanimous, testimony from over 150 lawmakers, and an ANA letter directly to the Secretary of Education — all of it, so far, without changing the outcome. Tuesday’s moves signal that nursing’s advocates are done trying to persuade the DoED and are now taking the fight elsewhere.

🤔 Do you think a legislative fix or the federal lawsuit is more likely to change the outcome for graduate nursing students? Share your thoughts in the comments below.