The case arose after the Chicago Tribune requested information from the University of Illinois regarding students’ parents contact information for a story on politics in college admissions. The school refused to release the information, citing FERPA compliance.

The federal judge’s ruling stated that, technically, releasing student information is not prohibited. Federal funding, however, is tied to compliance with FERPA regulations. Therefore schools may choose to violate FERPA if they are willing to forfeit their federal funding.

Judge Joan Gottschall wrote:

“Illinois could choose to reject federal education money, and the conditions of FERPA along with it, so it cannot be said that FERPA prevents Illinois from doing anything.”

The ruling was narrow by definition, but raises questions about personal privacy rights for students attending a public institution, as well as Congress’s power to encourage certain practices by tying funds to their implementation.

What do you think? Should enforcement of a regulation protecting students’ private information be tied to federal subsidies?

The situation raises questions of press freedom in wartime and how technology has challenged the power of governments to keep information secret. Use these strategies to help your students understand the issues raised by the WikiLeaks case:

- Have students compare and contrast the facts of the Pentagon Papers case (New York Times v. U.S.) with the current WikiLeaks publication of secret documents.

- Play this conversation between Assange and a U.S. journalist, and have students vote in the accompanying poll about whether he violated the Espionage Act.

- Hold a mock trial presenting arguments on the question of whether Assange violated the Espionage Act.

If you are looking for additional materials, our Presidents and the Constitution, Volume I curriculum has a great lesson on President Wilson and the Espionage Act.

P.S. Thank you for your feedback! This week we created a separate Student Handout PDF (share it online with your students: http://bit.ly/WikiLeaksForStudents) and Teacher Answer Key for this lesson after hearing your comments from our web survey. Please let us know what else we can improve!

By Pete Wright via Wikimedia Commons

- Obama T-shirt serves as voting ‘dress code’ reminder: Can the government stop voters from wearing politically-themed clothing to the polls?

- NPR’s federal funding questioned after analyst fired: Did NPR, which is partially funded with taxpayer dollars, abridge the First Amendment when it fired Juan Williams?

Do you agree with the actions taken in each of these articles?