In G.B. v. Woods County Board of Education, No. 2:24-cv-00220, 2025 WL 1922471, 125 LRP 17318 (S.D. W. Va. June 2, 2025), the district court addressed discovery disputes concerning classroom video recordings in litigation arising from the restraint of a six-year-old student with autism spectrum disorder. The parents brought claims under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and other federal law, and sought production of classroom video footage to evaluate what occurred during and leading up to the restraint.
The parents requested classroom video recordings for approximately thirty days preceding the suspension of a special education teacher who participated in the restraint. The school board agreed to produce the recordings only if the footage were heavily altered, proposing to blur everything except a boxed image around the student. The board also declined to produce recordings from days when the student was not present. It argued that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) required protection of the identities of other students in the classroom and that even blurring faces would not sufficiently prevent identification.
The parents objected, asserting that the proposed blurring would prevent meaningful review of whether the teacher or other adults acted inappropriately toward other students while their child was present, and that the blurring process would delay production. The dispute was referred to a magistrate judge.
The court granted the parents’ motion to compel. Relying extensively on prior authority from Mills v. Cabell County Board of Education, 3:22-cv-00592, 2023 WL 4378179 (S.D. W. Va. July 6, 2023), the court concluded that the school board failed to meet its burden of resisting discovery. It held that the board had not shown the recordings were irrelevant, disproportionate, or unduly burdensome to produce. The court emphasized that FERPA protects only “education records” that are directly related to a student, and that video recordings showing other students merely incidentally in the background do not constitute education records for those students. The court further noted that a protective order was already in place and that the recordings were being produced solely for discovery, not for public dissemination.
Applying those principles, the court determined that the classroom recordings were directly relevant to the claims, including evaluation of the teacher’s and other adults’ conduct. The court also found that the temporal scope of the request was limited and that the existing protective order adequately addressed privacy concerns for non-party students.
The decision reflects that unredacted classroom video recordings may be discoverable where they are relevant to claims involving student treatment, that FERPA does not categorically bar production of such recordings when other students appear only incidentally, and that protective orders may sufficiently safeguard student privacy during discovery.