California attorney general sues over alleged FERPA violation

By Esther Wickham
The Center Square

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit this week against the U.S. Department of Education, disputing its claim that the California Department of Education violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and challenging its threat to withhold $4.9 billion in federal education funding.

Bonta’s lawsuit, filed against the Trump administration, seeks to block what he described as an unlawful interpretation of FERPA. At a virtual press conference on Thursday, Bonta said the California Department of Education is fully compliant with the law as written and argued that the federal agency does not have the authority to expand statutory requirements.

“The Trump administration has been fond of looking at a law that is clear on what it requires and then twisting it and changing it. Rewriting it in their own minds into something that it is not that is consistent with their own political agenda,” Bonta told The Center Square.

FERPA gives parents or guardians the right to request their children’s education records. The Trump administration in January alleged that the CDE violated FERPA for attempting to “conceal information about students’ gender identity” from the parents.

“Our north star here is the law. The Trump administration cannot change the law with its own absurd rendering of it and then say you are not following the law and then withhold $5 billion,” Bonta said.

According to the complaint, the administration “unlawfully seeks to expand the requirements of FERPA by decree, reading an affirmative duty to disclose student records to parents where none exists and demanding that Plaintiff accede to this interpretation as a new condition of receiving federal education funding.”

On Bonta’s website, the office outlines various LGBTQ+ discrimination protections, including guidance stating that students have the right to disclose, or not disclose, their gender identity on their own terms, regardless of age.

Your school, whether public or private, doesn’t have the right to “out” you as LGBTQ+ to anyone without your permission, including your parents,” the website states.

Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, criticized the state’s approach in an exclusive interview with The Center Square. Burt said gender support plans, documents used by schools to support students who seek to transition, are treated as “unofficial records,” which he argues violates FERPA.

“The school is putting itself right in the middle of the relationship between parent and child and pitting them against each other,” Burt said. “You (the schools) are turning faith-based parents into the enemy that Bonta thinks he has to protect the kids from.”

The California Department of Education has publicly stated there is no “unofficial records” exception under FERPA, including for documents such as gender support plans. In a letter, the department said that whether a support plan or other education record is maintained in a central file or separate location to protect student privacy, it remains subject to parental inspection and review in accordance with FERPA.

Bonta said questions surrounding parental rights are matters for policymakers to discuss, but maintained that the current dispute centers around the law.