united-states privacy parental-rights students
Divulging students&#39; grades to third parties
<p>In the U.S., I understand that it is illegal for teachers to divulge a student's grades to anyone with no legitimate claim to the information.</p>

<p>Is it similarly illegal for parents to do that?</p>

<p>In some newspaper "advice" column, a high-school pupil wrote that her mother was using her grades to compete with the mother of some other pupil. The reasons why it is unethical for a teacher to do things like that seem obviously applicable to parents for the same reason. Might limited termination of parental rights be considered by the courts to be a reasonable remedy? Might there also be criminal liability?</p>

<p>The law involved is the US Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which is described at <a href="https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this Department of Education page</a>. FERPA applies to schools and other educational institutions that receive certain Federal funds. It does not apply to other organizations, unless such organizations receive educational information under a contract that restricts its use. Such contracts are required for some kinds of disclosures by FERPA, but not for other kinds. FERPA does not apply to parents.</p>

<p>I suppose that such a disclosure <strong>might</strong> be a tort of invasion of privacy (disclosure of private facts) in those jurisdictions that recognize that tort, but to prevail in such a suit, a plaintiff would need to show that disclosure was highly offensive to a reasonable person. Moreover, many US states do not recognize a private facts tort.</p>
