School records protected even after death

Several media outlets are suing to acquire the school disciplinary records of Connor Betts - the right-wing gunman in last year's mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

No. That's illegal. It's illegal not just under Ohio law but also under a federal law called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Betts's school district has denied the media requests. FERPA is in force even after a former student dies.

The Dayton shooting was tragic - but Betts's school records aren't the sort of help we can use. What precedent would it set if news outlets could access his records?

I guess Heavy.com is going to have to make something up again.

Sadly, the federal law did not stop the Miami Herald from somehow receiving the school records of Trayvon Martin - the teenager fatally shot by a trigger-happy George Zimmerman - and blabbing them everywhere. It was illegal for the school to release the records, yet it did so anyway. The newspaper printed information from the records even though this information was completely irrelevant to the story.