The U.S. Supreme Court has declined arguments in a case (Pitta v. Medeiros) looking at whether parents have the right to video recordings of meetings with their child’s school district about special education services.
The case involves the Massachusetts father of a child with disabilities who wanted to video record his son’s individualized education program meeting. After lower courts ruled that school officials could bar him from video recording a virtual meeting about his son’s individualized education program (IEP) he appealed to the Supreme Court
Worried that information had been left out of the minutes from previous meetings, the father asked the district to video record a September 2022 IEP meeting. The district declined but offered to audio record instead. The father indicated this would be “unsatisfactory” because audio would not make clear who was speaking.
At the start of the virtual meeting, the father indicated that he was video recording the session, but school officials quickly ended the meeting. The father argued this violated his First Amendment right to “record government officials in the performance of their duties.” The lower courts rejected the claim because the government officials in this case were school employees engaged in a closed-door meeting, not acting in a “public space.”
Dissatisfied with the ruling, he appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the matter with no comment, allowing the lower court ruling to stand.
It should be noted that with regard to IEP meetings, NJ regulation N.J.A.C. 6A:14-2.3(k)(8) specifically states that participants may use an audio-tape recorder during an IEP meeting as long as notice is provided to all other participants before the start of the meeting.
