Virginia Tech college student, Cho Seung-Hui had been judged mentally ill and a danger to himself and others yet his parents didn’t know. Virginia Tech was prevented from telling them by FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
FERPA was one of a series of “privacy” laws passed following Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s discovery of previously unknown “penumbras” in the 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut.
Abortion advocates invoke FERPA as the legal tool to allow minor girls to receive abortions without informing their parents.
In the long running Texas open records case, the Dallas Independent School District invoked FERPA to avoid disclosing the names of incompetent public school teachers.
A related law HIPPA, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is used to prevent the disclosure of the identity of AIDS infected individuals to their potential sexual partners.
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