Students who believe they were wronged by their college will now be able to get their day in court.

The Department of Education said Friday that colleges will be banned from requiring students to agree to settle any claims against a school in arbitration as a condition of enrolling. These so-called mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses were virtually ubiquitous in the agreements for-profit colleges required their students sign to enroll. Roughly 98% of students enrolled in a for-profit college receiving federal financial aid were subject to an arbitration clause during the 2013-2014 academic year, according to a report from the Century Foundation. That’s compared with just 7% of students at private nonprofit institutions and 0% of students at public colleges.

Consumer advocates have argued for months that the clauses, which are often combined with class-action bans, keep students from seeking justice in a court of law and instead force them to settle any claims in arbitration, a private process that advocates say often leans pro-business.

The clauses also mean that when students believe they were duped by their school their only outlet for relief is to ask the federal government to discharge their loans, which comes at a cost to taxpayers. By allowing borrowers to sue, the feds will make it easier for students to seek financial relief directly from their schools.

The ban comes several months after two major for-profit college chains, the University of Phoenix and DeVry Education Group, announced they would voluntarily abandon mandatory pre-dispute arbitration claims and as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau weighs restricting the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial products.

“This rule is a huge win for students,” said Julie Murray, a staff attorney at Public Citizen, a nonprofit focused on consumer advocacy. “It’s going to be a game changer for many students who for the past years have been locked out of court.” The rule applies to existing enrollment agreements, Murray noted, which means students who feel they’ve been misled and already agreed to pre-dispute arbitration claims may be able to air their concerns in court.

“The rule, by applying to existing and future agreements, is going to save taxpayers money ultimately,” Murray said. “We’ve seen that many of these students have been harmed, they have significant damages and unfortunately taxpayers are left holding the bag.”

The feds’ announcement came as part of a broader release of final regulations governing how and when borrowers who believe they were wronged by their schools can have their loans forgiven. Since the 1990s, federal student loan borrowers have had the right to have their debts wiped away if their school misled them through a process known as “defense to repayment,” but few filed so-called borrower defense claims until the collapse of major for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges last year.

With thousands of borrowers clamoring for relief and facing activist pressure, the Department moved to clarify the process for borrowers seeking discharges. Friday’s announcement marks the culmination of a months-long, contentious process to develop these rules, which largely take effect July 1, 2017.

So far, the Department has discharged the loans of more than 15,000 borrowers who attended a Corinthian Colleges campus, totaling over $247 million in debt relief. Officials have received 82,000 claims for relief, which they expect to resolve by spring 2017. The Debt Collective, which organized Corinthian borrowers in the wake of the school’s collapse to demand debt relief, criticized the Department’s announcement Friday, saying that the Corinthian borrowers receiving forgiveness amount to a fraction of those affected by the school’s collapse. The organization also took issue with the fact that in most cases, students will still have to raise their hands to receive relief.

Under the final regulations announced Friday, borrowers will have a right to have their loans discharged if they can prove their school violated its contractual agreement with the student or made a “substantial misrepresentation” to the student about the nature of the education offered, cost of the program or employability of graduates. In addition, state or federal court judgments against a school related to loan or educational services can serve as evidence for a successful borrower defense claim under the new rules.

The Secretary of Education also has the discretion to grant group discharges in cases when he or she believes groups of students were subject to the same misrepresentation. Borrowers identified by the secretary will be able to have their loans discharged even if they didn’t apply for relief. The regulations appear to leave discretion solely up to the secretary to identify groups eligible for discharges. Consumer advocates had hoped for a group discharge process that would allow other factors — like a lawsuit from states attorneys general — to trigger group discharges.

“How many harmed borrowers will benefit from group discharges and refunds is unclear, since they remain at the Education Department’s discretion,” Pauline Abernathy, the executive vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success, an organization focused on equality in education, said in a statement.

The new rules do make it easier for borrowers attending a school when it closed to get relief from their debt. That could be particularly important given that major for-profit college ITT Tech shut down earlier this year, leaving thousands of students in the lurch. Currently borrowers attending a school within 120 days of its closure can have their loans discharged as long as they don’t finish their program elsewhere, but they have to raise their hands to apply. Under the regulations announced Friday borrowers who were attending a school that closed after November 2013 and haven’t enrolled in a new program within three years will have their loans wiped away automatically.

So far, the Department has approved 7,858 applications for discharges from borrowers whose schools have closed, resulting in over $103 million of relief. Officials have rejected 4,963 applications for relief under the so-called closed-school discharge provision.