After passing in Congress by the slimmest of margins and being signed into law by President Bush last week, an error in the budget reconciliation package that would cut $12 billion from federal student loan programs may have rendered the bill unconstitutional.

The error, made by a clerk after the Senate passed the bill in December, makes the version passed by the House earlier this month different from the Senate version. The bill could now be challenged in court or return to the House for another vote.

One suit has already been filed against the law by Jim Ziegler, an Alabama attorney, according to Jenn Brown of the United States Student Association, a lobbying group for students. Brown also said that the National Women’s Law Center and the AFL-CIO are considering challenging the law.

The bill is known as the Deficit Reduction Act, and among other cuts to entitlement programs, it would slash federal subsidies to student loan providers and fix the student loan interest rate to 6.25 percent.

Georgetown officials lobbied extensively against the bill prior to its passage, saying that it would hurt students who rely on federal assistance to pay for college.

Scott Fleming, assistant to the university president for federal relations, said he did not know if Georgetown has legal standing to challenge the law in court. He also did not say whether the administration would support other legal efforts.

Fleming also said that if the House must vote on the bill again, Georgetown would renew its lobbying efforts.

“We would continue to oppose the bill,” he said. “We think it’s a bad bill.”

The discrepancy lies in a provision of the bill related to edicare reimbursements for certain rented medical equipment. The Senate bill set a limit of 13 months to collect reimbursements, but that number was accidentally changed to 36 before the bill went to the House. The figure was changed back to 13 before going to the president, but the House had already passed a bill with a 36-month limit.

Fleming noted that the dispute is only the latest development in the path that the Deficit Reduction Act has followed to passage, a process marred by criticism from groups opposing the entitlement cuts. The Senate passed the bill 51-50, with Vice President Cheney breaking the tie. The bill also barely passed the House, with a 216-214 vote.

“You almost begin to wonder if maybe this isn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

Many Democrats in the House alleged that the difference between the two versions of the bill did not arise accidentally. They said that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) knew of the discrepancy and chose not to correct the version of the bill because doing so might have hurt its chances of passage in the House.

“Even though there were valid means at your disposal to fix the problem, you apparently chose to ignore that option,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said to Hastert in a letter sent Tuesday.

Pelosi also introduced a resolution yesterday calling for an ethics investigation into the Republicans’ handling of the bill. The resolution was defeated without debate.

Gretchen Hamill, the press secretary for the House Republican Conference, declined to comment on the dispute over the bill.

Matthew Beck, a Democratic spokesperson for the House Ways and eans Committee, said that constitutional scholars expect that a legal challenge to the bill would succeed.

“We’ve asked for a re-vote,” he said.

He also noted that many Republicans who voted for the bill were uneasy about the notion of a re-vote because it would require that they cast another vote for cuts to entitlement programs.

With the validity of the bill in question, Georgetown administrators said they remain unsure of the implications the legislation could have for the university.

Fleming said that the Office of Student Financial Services has been putting together new aid packages for students because the Deficit Reduction Act increases the maximum financial aid packages available. The dispute over the bill leaves the planning for those increase grants hanging in the balance, he said.