EdLawConnect Blog

Last month a California Court of Appeal held that while electronic signatures are valid on employment arbitration agreements in California, if an employee disputes an electronic signature, the employer bears the burden of proving the employee electronically signed the document. (Ruiz v. Moss Brothers Auto Group (2014) 2014 WL 7335221.) This decision can guide K-12 school districts and community college ...

ConnectEDU, a college and career advising startup that holds the personal information of millions of students, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2014. ConnectEDU developed college- and career-planning sites where students could create personal profiles. As a result, ConnectEDU held a considerable amount of personally identifiable information including students’ names, dates of birth ...

California has adopted the Smarter Balanced Assessment System designed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, an organization formed to create assessments aligned to the Common Core academic content standards. This transition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative was initiated by Assembly Bill 484, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on October 2, 2013.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment ...

Under current law, an operator of a commercial Web site, online service, online application, or mobile applications that knows its service is being used by or directed to minors is required to: (1) make its privacy policy available to consumers; (2) notify consumers of the personal information it is collecting from them; (3) disclose the purpose for which collected information will be used; and (4) give ...

Recently the U.S. Supreme Court found that the exemptions for warrantless searches of arrestees for weapons or evidence, justified by the need for officer safety and to prevent destruction of evidence, did not apply to searching electronic data on a cell phone.  The Court unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search cellphones of people they arrest.  The court heard arguments in two cases and ...

Ever wish you could delete that embarrassing picture you posted to Facebook from cyberspace…permanently? California’s new “Eraser Law” gives California minors the ability to do just that. Well, except, maybe not permanently.

Senate Bill 568, approved by the Governor on September 23, 2013 and codified as California Business & Professions Code section 22580 et seq., goes into effect on January 1 ...

With advances in education technology and the prevalence of technology use in general, instructors, system administrators, online service providers, and others are commonly requesting that students and parents supply their email addresses in order to facilitate communications and learning.  Under current California law applicable to K-12 public educational institutions, student email addresses ...

Many school districts purchase electronic devices such as tablets and laptops for students as they enter high school.  To protect their investment, school districts often contract with companies to insure against future damage and repair costs.  These agreements are called extended service contracts and are governed by the California Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act (SBCWA), the California ...

Under the California Public Records Act (Government Code § 6250 et seq. (“PRA”)), a public agency must make public records available, upon request, in any electronic format in which the agency maintains the information. If a specific format is requested, the agency must produce the records in that format if the agency has used the format to create copies for its own use or to provide to other agencies ...

A growing trend among school districts across California is to allow staff and students to Bring Your Own Device (“BYOD”) to the school campus.  Staffs have, and many already use, their own personal devices, such as smartphones and iPad for instruction and administration due to the efficiency and capabilities of these devices.  BYOD can boost staff performance because it eliminates limitations as to ...