Here’s a follow-up on a case previously mentioned on this blog:
Wyatt v. Kilgore Indep. Sch. Dist., No. 10-674 (E.D. Tex. Nov. 30, 2011)
Abstract: A federal district court in Texas has ruled that a student has stated a valid cause of action for violation of her substantive due process right to privacy based on school officials’ disclosure of her sexual orientation to her mother. It rejected school officials’ assertion of qualified immunity as a defense to the privacy claim, as factual disputes remained regarding whether school officials acted in an objectively reasonably manner and violated the student’s clearly established right to privacy.
The district court also upheld the validity of the student’s claim of municipal liability based on the school district’s failure to properly train employees and having a policy of disclosing a student’s sexual orientation. As with the privacy claim, it found that there were factual disputes regarding whether the school district has a policy of disclosing students’ sexual orientation and whether the district was deliberately indifferent to its duty to properly train employees to keep students’ sexual orientation confidential.
Read more on NSBA Legal Clips. Note that this has nothing to do with FERPA, which only protects education records.
h/t, @EducationNY