COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio's Attorney General has joined the ranks of those asking the Department of Education to forgive the student loans of thousands of disabled veterans. 

Dave Yost signed a onto the letter of 51 attorney generals that are asking the federal deparment to automatically forgive the loans. 

According to Yost's office, DOE identified more than 42,000 veterans as eligible for student loan relief due to a service-related total and permanent disability last year.  

The attorneys general note in their letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that fewer than 9,000 of those veterans had applied to have their loans discharged by April 2018. More than 25,000 had student loans in default.

"There is nothing our nation could possibly do for these brave men and women that is ever going to be repayment enough," Yost said. "This is one area in which we can guarantee them the relief they so richly deserve – and that they already are entitled to under the law."

The letter calls on DOE to develop a process to automatically discharge the student loans of veterans determined by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be eligible for such relief. 

While the automatic discharge process is in development, the letter proposes DOE should halt debt collection efforts targeting disabled veterans and clear their credit reports of any negative reporting related to their student loans. 

Under federal law, DOE is required to discharge the federal student loans of veterans determined by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be unemployable (or totally and permanently disabled) due to a service-connected condition.

 Although DOE currently requires disabled veterans to take affirmative steps to apply for a loan discharge, those steps are not required by law.

The attorneys general note that the federal government has taken some steps to make it easier for eligible veterans to secure student loan relief. 

According to their letter, however, an automatic discharge process that gives individual veterans an opportunity to opt out for personal reasons "would eliminate unnecessary paperwork burdens and ensure that all eligible disabled veterans can receive a discharge."

"Proposals for automatic discharges with opt-out rights have bipartisan support in Congress and among leading veterans' advocacy organizations," the letter states. The veterans groups supporting such proposals have included: Vietnam Veterans for America, Veterans Education Success, The Retired Enlisted Association, High Ground Advocacy, and Ivy League Veterans Council.

The letter closes by urging DOE to "take action to better protect those who once protected the nation. Our veterans deserve nothing less."