Summary
The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the dismissal of Sidney Souffrance’s petition for a writ of mandamus seeking student attendance, contact, and computer-use records from a community school. The court held that the requested records remained subject to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act because the individuals were students when the records were created and maintained.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether FERPA bars disclosure of education records concerning persons who were former students when the records were requested but were students when the records were created and maintained.
- Whether the court of appeals properly dismissed Souffrance's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking those records.
Holdings
- FERPA's definition of student includes persons for whom an educational institution maintains education records or personally identifiable information, and records created or maintained while the persons were students remain subject to FERPA's nondisclosure provisions even after they are no longer students.
- The court of appeals properly dismissed Souffrance's petition for a writ of mandamus because the requested records were protected from disclosure by FERPA.
Key quotations
“For the purposes of this section, the term ‘student’ includes any person with respect to whom an educational agency or institution maintains education records or personally identifiable information, but does not include a person who has not been in attendance at such agency or institution” (¶ 2)
“It has long been the Department [of Education]’s interpretation that records created or received by an educational agency or institution on a former student that are directly related to the individual’s attendance as a student are not excluded from the definition of education records under FERPA” (¶ 2)
Factual background
Inmate Sidney Souffrance sought attendance records, addresses, telephone numbers, and computer-terminal records concerning students at the Life Skills Center of Cincinnati, a community school. The requested records related to persons who were no longer students when Souffrance requested them, but the persons were students when the records were created and maintained. The Supreme Court held that their former-student status did not remove the records from FERPA's confidentiality protections.
Procedural history
Souffrance filed a mandamus petition in the Court of Appeals for Hamilton County seeking records from the Life Skills Center of Cincinnati, Inc. The court of appeals dismissed the petition, concluding that disclosure of the requested student records was barred by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed.