Gonzaga University v. Doe
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal law protecting student education records does not give students a personal right they can sue over using the federal civil-rights statute known as Section 1983.
Because Congress wrote the privacy law to police schools' overall funding compliance rather than to grant individual students an enforceable right, students harmed by improper disclosures cannot collect damages through this route, even though the law still requires schools to safeguard records or risk losing federal funds.
“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.”
The Court's core reasoning for why FERPA creates no personally enforceable right.
How it got here: A jury awarded the student damages in Washington state court; the Washington Court of Appeals reversed on the FERPA claim, but the Washington Supreme Court reinstated the award, prompting the university's appeal.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A former Gonzaga University education student was accused of sexual misconduct by another student. A university employee investigating the claim told the state teacher-certification agency about the allegations, identifying the accused student by name. He said he never received the disclosure or a chance to respond before being denied the certification he needed to become a public-school teacher, and he sued the university and the employee.
The question before the Court
Could a former student sue a private university for money damages under a federal civil-rights law to enforce a federal student-privacy statute?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that FERPA's student-record privacy provisions do not give students a personal right enforceable through a Section 1983 damages lawsuit. FERPA's language directs the Secretary of Education to withhold federal funds from schools with bad disclosure policies, but it does not speak in the individual, rights-focused terms Congress uses when it wants to let people sue directly, unlike anti-discrimination laws banning treatment of "any person."
The Court also folded its Section 1983 test together with the standard used for implied private lawsuits directly under a statute, holding both require clear proof Congress meant to create an individual right. Because FERPA's text focuses on institutional policies and funds a detailed administrative complaint process instead, the Court found no such right and reversed the damages award, sending the case back to the Washington courts.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Students and parents who believe a school wrongly disclosed private education records can no longer sue for money damages under the federal civil-rights statute. Their main recourse becomes filing a complaint with the Department of Education, which can eventually cut off a school's federal funding but does not compensate the person harmed.
What changes now
The case returns to the Washington courts, where the FERPA-based damages award cannot stand under this ruling, though the student's separate state-law tort and contract claims may still proceed. More broadly, the decision forecloses similar Section 1983 suits under FERPA nationwide, leaving students and parents to pursue complaints through the Department of Education's administrative process rather than private lawsuits for damages.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the university actually acted "under color of state law," a separate requirement for Section 1983 suits, assuming without deciding that point. It also left open how its reasoning applies to other spending-power statutes with different, more individually focused wording.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed FERPA creates no privately enforceable right, but rejected the majority's rigid presumption that a right exists only if 'unambiguously' set out in the statute's text and structure. He would instead weigh multiple factors flexibly, including that FERPA's key terms are broad and vague, that private suits could produce inconsistent rulings on sensitive school-record issues, and that Congress likely wanted the administrative remedy to be exclusive.
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“The Court's ratio decidendi in this case has a "now you see it, now you don't" character.”Stevens's opening criticism that the majority's reasoning shifts inconsistently between two theories.
Justice Stevens argued FERPA's text is full of explicit rights-creating language for both parents and students, and that the specific nondisclosure provision at issue meets the Court's own established test for enforceable rights. He objected that the majority improperly imported the stricter standard from implied-right-of-action cases into the Section 1983 context, creating an unwarranted 'second-class' category of rights and departing from decades of lower-court consensus that FERPA rights were enforceable.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether Congress used the kind of clear, rights-creating language needed to let someone sue a state actor for violating a federal spending-power statute under Section 1983, the federal civil-rights law that lets people sue for violations of federal rights.
- The Court held that this inquiry is the same one used to decide whether a law creates a right that can be enforced through an implied private lawsuit directly under the statute itself, even though Section 1983 plaintiffs don't need to separately prove Congress wanted a private remedy.
- Applying that standard, the Court found FERPA's nondisclosure provisions speak only to the Secretary of Education about withholding funds from institutions with a bad 'policy or practice,' rather than using individual-focused language like anti-discrimination statutes that ban treatment of 'any person.'
- The Court reasoned this funding-focused, aggregate wording -- concerned with an institution's overall practices rather than any one student's treatment -- fails to show Congress meant to give individual students a personal, enforceable right.
- The Court also pointed to the detailed administrative complaint and review process Congress built for the Department of Education to handle violations, finding this further showed Congress intended agency enforcement rather than private lawsuits.
- Because FERPA's text and structure gave no clear indication Congress meant to create individual rights, the Court concluded there was no basis for a private damages suit under Section 1983.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Blessing v. Freestone (520 U.S. 329)
Clarifies that Blessing's factors do not create a looser 'benefit' standard, requiring an unambiguously conferred right instead.
Reaffirms Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority (479 U.S. 418)
Cited as a valid example where clear, specific statutory language did create an enforceable individual right.