Court Case Could Protect Students Secretly Recording Teachers

A new court case in the state of Maine could protect public school students who secretly record their teachers during class.

The case, Pollack v. Regional School Unit 75, centers on a Maine school district who refused an autistic student’s desire to record his teachers during class. According to the suit, the student returned from school crying after school officials told him that he couldn’t record his class sessions. The student, who has “very limited expressive abilities,” would reportedly have benefited from being able to record his classes.

The case suits a 2011 court precedent that declares that it is legal to record public officials working in public, namely law enforcement officers during an arrest.

Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank LoMonte argued that the case could provide an opportunity for student journalists, but cites concerns that teachers and professors could waive the right to record as a prerequisite to taking the class.

“The college classroom is arguably a little different because taking any particular class is optional – nobody’s compelled to be there – so if a professor were to say that waiving the right to record is a required prerequisite to taking the class, it might hold up,” LoMonte said.

But LoMonte is optimistic about the possibility that Pollack could become the standard. In that case, he argues, students will be able to claim that it is their first amendment right to record public class proceedings.

“If the Pollack case becomes accepted as the standard, you will see students successfully asserting a First Amendment right to record in the college classroom as well,” LoMonte argued.

In February, a student at Orange Coast College in California was suspended after secretly recording his professor’s anti-Trump rant.

“It’s an act of terrorism,” professor Olga Perez Stable Cox said to her class about Donald Trump’s election victory. “One of the most frightening things for me, and most people in my life, is that the people committing the assault are among us. It is not some stranger from some other country coming in and attacking our sense of what it means to be an American and the things that we stands for. And that makes it more painful.”

The pro-Trump student who recorded the class out of the fear that Cox wouldn’t be able to grade him fairly was suspended by the college before the decision was ultimately overturned.

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com