He also said her method was not subject to judicial review.

That proved untrue: Six months after a new partial-forgiveness policy was implemented, Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of Federal District Court in San Francisco ruled that using the Social Security data violated the federal Privacy Act. Since then, the department has been entangled in a messy court battle, which recently resulted in Ms. DeVos being held in contempt of court and facing a $100,000 fine.

The fight has now become part of a broad effort to thwart Mr. Menashi’s confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Eileen Connor, the legal director at Harvard’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, the group representing Corinthian students in the lawsuit, warned that “putting Menashi on the bench will be seen by government agencies as a green light to put their agenda above the rights of everyday Americans, and above the rule of law.”

“As we’ve seen time and time again, the only way for students to get a fair shake is not from the Department of Education, it’s through the courts,” she said. “Menashi has shown that in his view there is no role for the federal courts in reviewing, much less checking, executive action. This is a dangerous perspective for someone who could potentially hold a lifelong appointment to the federal appeals court.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The memo sheds light on the role that Mr. Menashi played in creating one of the Education Department’s most embattled policies, which has made it significantly harder for people to seek student loan forgiveness. The memo, in which Mr. Menashi outlined the legal bases for the new loan forgiveness calculation resting “on substantial evidence of the harm to borrowers,” informed a high-ranking official in the department’s student aid office that it superseded legal interpretation by the Obama administration.