Jamie and Chris return for the third episode on the Mahmoud v. Taylor case! This time, we break down the recent Supreme Court Decision that came out at the end of the term. It was an interesting decision made by the Court's conservative majority, adding another (ambiguous) layer to decades of parental rights and school curriculum case law. We also discuss the AJT v. Osseo Supreme Court decision that eliminates the higher bar that parents needed to sue under the ADA and Section 504.

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Supreme Court, Mahmoud v. Taylor, Oral Argument, LGBTQ Inclusive Curriculum, Religion, Parental Rights, Richard Katskee

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #SCOTUS #religionineducation #LGBTQ

What does the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, say about the practice of peer grading? When does something become an “educational record” protected under FERPA? Do you think the people who wrote FERPA knew we were going to call it 'FERPA'? Couldn’t they have come up with a better acronym? This is our first FERPA episode! This is the law that’s designed to protect the privacy of student records. So, what information is protected under FERPA, and what isn’t? Today’s case involves a parent who took issue with a teacher’s use of peer-grading, saying that it violated her children’s privacy and subjected them to unnecessary embarrassment. This is the Supreme Court case of Owasso Independent School District v. Falvo. We also discuss a recent decision out of the 5th Circuit that makes it more difficult to challenge the removal of books from a local library, at least in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Education Records, Peer Grading, Libraries, Book Bans

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #FERPA #StudentRights #BUZZKILL

Can the U.S. Department of Education require schools to stop all DEI programs and activities? What do they actually mean when they say “DEI?” Are you ready to go three rounds on the injunction junction? We’ve got a three-fer for you today. Three cases for the price of none! We’re covering how three courts are dealing with the Trump Administration’s education directives to curtail DEI programs and initiatives in schools. In our bell-ringer for Episode 39, we talked about a Dear Colleague Letter from the U.S. Department of Education that purported to “reiterate existing legal requirements” under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act regarding racial discrimination. That letter seemed to lump DEI efforts in with intentional discrimination. Well, we now have three different court decisions halting the enforcement of that letter, so let's dig in! We also discuss the Supreme Court's decision in the Oklahoma virtual religious charter school case. (Go back and listen to Episode 44; our guest, Dr. Martha McCarthy, totally called it!) It's an interesting one. Not every Supreme Court decision is exactly two sentences long!

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Title VI, Racial Discrimination, U.S. Department of Education, the Trump Administration, Administrative Law, Oklahoma, Religion, Charter Schools

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #DEI #Trump #InjunctionJunction

When can a school dismiss a teacher for good or just cause? What happens when a teacher’s iPhone with some, let's say, risque pictures, automatically syncs with his district-issued iPad? What could possibly go wrong? We've got another interesting case here today! This one involves a teacher who took some “naughty” pictures on his personal iPhone while on vacation, which later happened to be synced to a school-issued device (don't worry, though, no students saw them). Well, the proverbial cat got out of the bag, and he was reported to child protective services, who called school officials, and we’ll dig into how all that played out as we cover the case of the Board of Trustees of Lincoln County School District Number 2 v Earling. We also discuss a great EdWeek article that's tracking all of the lawsuits filed over Trump's education policies, conveniently titled, "See All the Lawsuits Filed Over Trump's Education Policies." Check it out here: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/see-all-the-lawsuits-filed-over-trumps-education-policies/2025/03

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Teachers and Teacher Discipline, Labor and Employment, Good or Just Cause, Technology and Cell Phones

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #teachers

Is a charter school a public school? Does the Free Exercise Clause require taxpayers to fund charter schools that teach religion as truth? Is a charter school just a private organization with a state contract, or is it a state actor or even a governmental entity? Is Oklahoma on the brink of establishing the country’s first religious public school? Today, we’re tackling the oral arguments from another consequential Supreme Court case with some major implications for education. We usually only see these kinds of big ones every few years, but the Supreme Court is all-in on education these days. You’ve probably heard about this one, too, since it’s been all over the news (and all over Chalk & Gavel; we covered the OK Supreme Court's decision in this case in Episode 23). This one deals with a Catholic organization that was approved to operate a religious charter school by Oklahoma’s Charter School Review Board. Oklahoma's Attorney General, a republican named Gentner Drummond, believed that this violated the Establishment Clause and the state’s charter school law. This case went all the way to Oklahoma’s Supreme Court, which sided with Drummond, and that’s where most of us thought it would stay… but no, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to weigh in on the situation, and here we are. To help us break down those oral arguments, we’re honored to be joined by Dr. Martha McCarthy, a legend in education law who has been writing about religion and public schools since the 1980s! You don't want to miss this one!

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Supreme Court, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, Oral Argument, Religion, Free Exercise Clause, Establishment Clause, Charter Schools, Martha McCarthy

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #SCOTUS #religionineducation #schoolchoice

Does it burden a family’s religion to have their child exposed to views with which they disagree? Where is the line between exposure and coercion? Who gets to draw that line? Should public schools be a place where students encounter and acknowledge a variety of viewpoints, even if they don’t agree with them? Or should parents have the power to opt their kids out of anything that might conflict with their religious views? Can a diverse, inclusive curriculum co-exist with ever-increasing parental rights? Is opting out going to become a constitutional right? This all seems pretty straightforward, huh? Today, we're discussing the Supreme Court's oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Jamie was there in person to witness the arguments. (Apparently, Chalk & Gavel is press!) By now, you’ve probably heard of this one; we covered the Circuit Court’s opinion in Episode 12, and there has been a decent amount of news coverage. This is the case in which religious parents want to opt their children out of reading LGBTQ inclusive books in the elementary English curriculum. To help us make sense of all of this, we’re welcoming back Richard Katskee, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic at Duke University, who is intimately familiar with arguing religious issues in education at the Supreme Court. You don't want to miss this one as we break down the oral argument and read the tea leaves to unpack how the Court may decide the case and what impacts it will have on K-12 education!

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk & Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Supreme Court, Mahmoud v. Taylor, Oral Argument, LGBTQ Inclusive Curriculum, Religion, Parental Rights, Richard Katskee

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #SCOTUS #religionineducation #LGBTQ

Sheet1Sheet2When can educators use materials created by someone else? What happens when a teacher creates a learning activity packet for her class that includes 11 pages copied straight from a copyrighted work? What do Chris and Jamie know about cake decorating? Turns out, not much (except what we've learned from The Great British Baking Show and Nailed It!). In this episode, we’re going back to the 70s and 80s for our first case about copyright and fair use in education. We're discussing Marcus v. Rowley, a case that involves a teacher who copied some material from a copyrighted book, Cake Decorating Made Easy, for use in her home economics class. Unfortunately for her, the author of the book found out and sued her for copyright infringement. We also discuss the Trump administration's recent Executive Order, entitled "Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities," which instructs the Secretary of Education to prepare to close the Department of Education.---Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk and Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠---Keywords: Copyright, Fair Use, Teaching and Educational Purposes, Cake Decorating, U.S. Department of Education, Trump Administration, Executive Order#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #teachers #copyright #educationalfairuse #DOE

What happens when a student with a disability graduates high school with a 3.4 GPA but is unable to read? When does an Individualized Education Program provide a Free and Appropriate Education as required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act? Are you ready for another round of special education acronym bingo? We were ready AF. This is the case of William A. v. Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, a case involving whether or not a school failed to provide a free and appropriate public education to a student who graduated without the ability to read. We also discuss the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal's decision that affirmed the Littlejohn v. Leon County case that we covered in Episode 36. That case involved a school creating a support plan for a transgender student without parental involvement. Finally, we reflect on some recent massive layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education.

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Need some education law content for your courses or professional development? We have a Teaching Guide! You can check it out at our website, ⁠ChalkandGavel.com⁠.

We'd also greatly appreciate it if you would consider supporting Chalk and Gavel by becoming a subscriber on Patreon. Your support will help us continue to deliver the education law content you want to hear! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/chalkandgavel⁠

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Keywords: Students with Disabilities, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Individualized Education Program (IEP), Reading Decoding, Fluency, and Comprehension, Transgender Students, Parental Rights, U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights

#educationlaw #k12 #podcast #ChalkandGavel #teachers #studentswithdisabilties #IEP