WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a ruling that could mean easier access to campus crime information, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that individuals do not have the right to sue a school for releasing records covered by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
In a 7-2 ruling, the Court decided that individual students cannot seek damages from institutions for the release of personal information regulated by FERPA, also known as the Buckley Amendment. The decision limits what could have been a chilling effect on the news media from schools fearing lawsuits and tightening their reign on student information.
The 1974 statute prohibits all federally funded institutions from releasing individual students’ “education records” without the prior written consent of students or their parents. The only remedy for violations explicitly provided in the statute is the withholding of federal funding when the U.S. Department of Education finds the school has engaged in a “policy or practice” of releasing such records.
“[W]here a statute provides no indication that Congress intends to create new individual rights, there is no basis for a private suit,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the five-person majority. The decision keeps enforcement of FERPA within the Department of Education.
“[I]f Congress wishes to create new rights enforceable under [Section] 1983, it must do so in clear and unambiguous terms no less and no more that what is required for Congress to create new rights enforceable under an implied private right of action,” Rehnquist continued. “FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions contain no rights-creating language, they have an aggregate, not individual, focus, and they serve primarily to direct the Secretary of Education’s distribution of public funds to educational institutions.”
Justice David Souter joined by Justice Steven Breyer filed a concurring opinion, stating that FERPA does not imply private lawsuits because the law itself is “broad and nonspecific,” leaving schools “uncertain as to just when they can, or cannot, reveal various kinds of information.”
“[FERPA] is open to interpretations that invariably favor confidentiality almost irrespective of conflicting educational needs or the importance, or common sense, of limited disclosures in certain circumstances,” Breyer wrote.
Breyer, however, refused to buy into the majority’s use of a single “clear and unambiguous” language test to determine whether a federal law gave an individual the right to sue.
“[T]he statute books are too many, the laws too diverse, and their purposes too complex, for any single legal formula to offer more than general guidance,” Breyer wrote.
Justice John Paul Stevens dissented and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg joined, criticizing the court for ignoring a “new category of second-class statutory rights” that have been created by Congress but which can no longer be enforced.
The question of private action was raised when former Gonzaga University student Ru Paster, identified in court documents only as John Doe, said university officials violated FERPA when they passed on unsubstantiated sexual assault allegations to the Washington state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Paster said that he failed to get state teaching certification because of the allegations.
Paster then sued the Spokane, Wash., school for defamation, negligence, breach of contract and violation of FERPA after it released information to the state licensing agency related to accusations that he had sexually assaulted another student. Paster was never convicted of a crime, and the state supreme court upheld a jury decision awarding him $1.1 million, $450,000 of which was based on the FERPA violation.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to clarify whether individual students or their parents can sue for violation of the privacy law.
The U.S. Department of Justice and several organizations, including the Student Press Law Center, supported Gonzaga’s arguments by filing friend-of-the-court briefs, noting that schools routinely use FERPA to deny access to important public records, especially relating to campus crime. The SPLC brief argued that allowing private lawsuits under FERPA would result in even less disclosure by schools.
The majority went beyond FERPA to declare that no federal law can create a private cause of action under Section 1983, a statute that allows individuals to pursue claims for alleged civil-rights violations, unless the language of the law in question clearly states that such a suit is permissible.
Cite: Gonzaga University v. Doe 2002 WL 1338070 (June 20, 2002)
