On May 1, 2020, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), does not protect some students’ names and disciplinary records from release to the media.
What does this mean for you? If you have been found responsible for a violation of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Title IX policy, your name, the violation against you, and the sanction you received could be subject to release. This is true regardless of whether you were accused of rape, sexual assault, or any related or lesser included sexual misconduct.
This ruling gives media and the public unprecedented access to the confidential information of students specifically from UNC-Chapel Hill, but it presumptively applies to all seventeen UNC System campuses. This means that there will likely be similar records requests sent to all University of North Carolina campuses statewide, Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, North Carolina Central, North Carolina State University, Western Carolina University, and Winston-Salem State University, among others. Based on the finding in the court’s order, students who attended any of the UNC system schools since 2007 and were found responsible for a sexual misconduct violation could have their previously confidential records released pertaining to a Title IX investigation.
The decision is based on the North Carolina Public Records Act, N.C.G.S. §§ 132-1 to -11 (2017). In 2016, four media outlets requested “copies of all public records made or received by [UNC-CH] in connection with a person having been found responsible for rape, sexual assault or any related or lesser included sexual misconduct by [UNC-CH’s] Honor Court, the Committee on Student Conduct, or the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office.” UNC expressly refused to produce the records, asserting that they were “educational records” as defined by FERPA and were thus “protected from disclosure by FERPA.”
In May, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that UNC-Chapel Hill must disclose the name of the student, the violation committed, and any sanction imposed by the University on that student if the public or press make a request for this information. Based on the history of this case, these student disciplinary records could be released very soon.
If you or a loved one has been accused or found responsible for sexual misconduct on a university campus in North Carolina, please call Dysart Willis Houchin & Hubbard. We will work with you to determine whether your records are subject to public release and what you may be able to do to challenge the disclosure.