Changing Privacy Laws Could Spell Trouble for Vulnerable LGBTQ+ Students

August 26, 2026

The U.S. Department of Education, in tandem with the Department of Justice, is using two federal privacy laws dating back to the 1970s to challenge school policies that protect LGBTQ+ students’ privacy. These are:

For the Trump administration, these laws help parents protect their children’s mental health and their own parenting choices.

For critics — a group that includes many educators, LGBTQ+ students and their allies, and civil rights organizations — the way the administration is deploying FERPA and PPRA violates the privacy of vulnerable students, especially those who can’t safely disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity at home.

The Education Law Team at the LLF National Law Firm fights for students across the country every day to ensure their schools honor their right to a quality education free of harassment and bias. If your school unlawfully disclosed your personal information or failed to protect your privacy rights, contact our offices today: call 888-535-3686 or send us a confidential message online.

FERPA: What’s Changing?

FERPA has played an important role in protecting student privacy for decades because it regulates what kind of information about students a school can share with their parents and others.

  • What it does: The law explicitly gives the parents of children under 18 the right to review their educational records.
  • What it doesn’t do: It does not explicitly require schools to notify a student’s parents if the student shares confidential information with a counselor or asks to use a different name or pronouns.

What’s changing: The Trump administration believes that FERPA does, in fact, give schools the right to share information relating to students’ gender identity (including pronoun usage requests) and sexuality, and that school districts with policies to the contrary are in violation of the law.

PPRA: What’s Changing?

Congress enacted PPRA in 1978 to address a specific concern: schools were collecting sensitive personal information about students without their parents’ knowledge in the form of:

  • Psychological assessments
  • Values questionnaires
  • Survey questions on personal matters

The law says schools have to notify parents of these kinds of information-gathering activities and gives them the right, in some cases, to opt out.

Now, the Trump administration is arguing that PPRA has a much broader scope. They say the law requires schools to notify parents about instruction or activities involving gender identity or sexuality, and about any information on record about students’ gender identity and sexuality.

How Can LGBTQ+ Students Protect Themselves?

While the changing interpretations of FERPA and PPRA are hashed out in the courts, schools are going to have to find their way into compliance in very murky conditions — the kind of circumstance that often results in the hasty adoption of poorly-crafted or misinformed new policies.

LGBTQ+ students (as well as non-LGBTQ+ students, for that matter) need an experienced Education Law Team on their side. At the LLF National Law Firm, we’ll cut through your school’s confusion and error to clarify your rights under existing law and ensure your school treats you with fairness and dignity throughout the process.

Call our Education Law Team now at 888-535-3686, or send us a message online.

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