This post has been updated with comment from the Maine governor鈥檚 office.
Maine is the latest state to pass a law amid frustration with federal inaction over the supervision of student loan companies.
On Thursday, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed the 鈥淎ct To Establish a Student Loan Bill of Rights To License and Regulate Student Loan Servicers,鈥 which will go into effect in September.
鈥Paying back student loan debt is difficult enough without a profit-hungry lender trying to make it harder and more expensive,鈥 Governor Mills said in a statement. 鈥淏y signing this bill into law, Maine is taking critical action to create oversight, implement accountability, and protect the interests of our borrowers.鈥
The legislation follows similar actions taken by about a dozen states, including Connecticut and Illinois, and reveals a strategy where lawmakers on the state level are taking political action to address the student debt crisis that arose from years of lax oversight and predatory loan servicers.
鈥淭here are talks of federal legislation that would lessen the need for states to act,鈥 D.C.-based nonprofit Generation Progress' Charlotte Hancock told Yahoo Finance. 鈥淏ut in the interim and in with the [Education Secretary Betsy] DeVos deregulation agenda firmly in place鈥 state legislators are taking matters into their own hands to do something about the problems they鈥檙e hearing about over and over again from the
