Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents are entitled to access educational records that the school maintains if those records are “directly related” to their child. Yesterday we told you about a case in Nevada where the court held that emails stored on Google Vault are “maintained” by the district. Were those emails also “directly related” to the child?
The Nevada Supreme Court tells us that:
You can’t answer that question without reviewing the emails.
That’s because not every email that includes a student’s name is “directly related” to that student. Key Quote: “Records that include information about a student, but are primarily about someone or something else, are not directly related.” The court offers an example from an earlier decision: “a report investigating a school administrator was not directly related to particular students despite including those students’ names and activities.”
However, Congress intended FERPA’s definition of “directly related” to be “broad in scope.”
Records “directly related” to a student are not necessarily about academics. They might be about discipline, or extracurricular activities.
Records can be “directly related’ to a student even though they were not created by the school or its employees.
Since the emails had not yet examined, and a review of their content was necessary, the court ordered the school district to turn over to the lower court every email that mentions the student by name, initial, or student ID number. This process will be painstaking and expensive, but the court noted that the district had “acknowledged the feasibility of directing an IT specialist to perform such a search.”
The case is Clark County School District v. 8th Judicial District Court, decided by the Supreme Court of Nevada on March 6, 2025.
Jane Doe has misophonia. This is a disorder that causes people to have disproportionately strong reactions to common sounds. We’re not talking about fingernails on the chalkboard. Everyone hates that. We’re not talking about the loud, obnoxious roar of a leaf blower. We’re talking about the sound of someone eating food or chewing gum. Jane’s parents made a simple request of the school: tell the other kids not to eat or chew gum in the classroom. Jane attended L&N STEM Academy, a unique school of choice. It did not have a cafeteria and had a policy of allowing each teacher to decide if eating in the classroom would be acceptable. Consider this:
According to L&N’s principal, the school seeks to develop a “unique” culture that gives the students more independence than a typical high school….Because L&N operates more like a college, it has gathering spaces that can hold only 70 to 90 students and lacks a designated “cafeteria.” ….If students could eat only at specified times, the school would have to change its “entire schedule.” Some students also travel from hours away to attend L&N and stay for extracurricular activities. They may remain on campus for over 12 hours and often need to eat more than at a designated lunch time. The school thus allows teachers to permit snacking during class.
Based on all of that, the school denied the parents’ request. The parents sued, alleging 1) intentional discrimination based on disability; and 2) failure to provide a reasonable accommodation. The court dismissed the claim of intentional discrimination because there was no plausible evidence that the school denied the requested accommodation because of the student’s disability. It was significant that the school offered other accommodations, and had legitimate reasons for balking at the parents’ request. However, the court did not dismiss the claim of a denial of reasonable accommodation. So that claim will proceed. If you take a request for accommodations seriously, look into it, engage in the “interactive process” the law requires, and offer accommodations, you will probably pass the “deliberate indifference” test. However, the issue of the reasonableness of the request is a more difficult matter. This case is not over because the court is not yet convinced that it would “fundamentally alter” the school’s operation to grant the parents’ request.
This one is Doe v. Knox County BOE, decided by the federal court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on December 13, 2024. We found it at 124 LRP 41975.