An Ohio school expelled a student for trying to turn off surveillance software spying on him at home.
Weeks later the Supreme Court ruled that same kind of location tracking requires a warrant most schools skip entirely.
Parents are only now learning what their kids' school laptops have secretly been recording the whole time.
Surveillance Software Runs Long After the School Day Ends
Google Workspace for Education products are used in nearly 70 percent of American K-12 schools, putting a Google-linked device in most students' backpacks.
Layered on top of that are third-party monitoring programs like GoGuardian, Securly, and Linewize – tools schools install to filter content during class.
Districts routinely leave that same software running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, long after the final bell rings.
In one Ohio district, a student who tried to disable GoGuardian on his own device was expelled – and only had the discipline reduced after outside legal pressure.
Securly, one of the most widely used monitoring tools, has separately been accused in a federal lawsuit of tracking students' locations and video-watching habits and sharing that data with outside companies.
In Oregon, one family discovered the school's content filter banned Planned Parenthood's website but ignored online chatter about steroid abuse entirely.
None of this required a warrant, a judge, or so much as a phone call home.
A school administrator simply flipped a switch and watched your kid.
Supreme Court Says Your Location Data Is Your Property
On June 29, the Supreme Court quietly buried a robber's defense and handed every parent in America a weapon instead.
Police in Midlothian, Virginia got a warrant forcing Google to hand over location data on every phone within 150 meters of a credit union robbery.
The justices split 6-3, ruling that pulling anyone's location history from a tech company counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment, full stop.
Justice Neil Gorsuch went further in his concurrence, writing that "Mr. Chatrie's location history data qualifies as his personal property."
Property. Not a courtesy Google extends. Not a privilege a school can waive on your behalf. Property.
Why Your Kid Has Less Privacy Than a Robbery Suspect
Here is the ugly irony nobody in the education bureaucracy wants parents to notice.
Okello Chatrie, the credit union robbery suspect at the center of the case, now has more Fourth Amendment protection over his location data than your third grader does over hers.
Police needed a judge's signature to get two hours of one suspect's movements.
Your child's school gets months of location history and browsing activity with a single login – no judge required.
That gap exists because Chatrie was decided against police, and law enforcement is bound by the Fourth Amendment in ways private companies and school districts simply are not.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai's company built the ecosystem, collects the data, and faces no warrant requirement because a school administrator agreed to the terms of service instead of you.
Fine for the police. Meaningless for a superintendent handing your family's data to a vendor with a login page.
Watch how fast the same school boards that stonewalled parents over curriculum start finding excuses when the subject turns to data.
Families are already pushing back – lawsuits over Google's classroom tools and Securly's location tracking have piled up in federal courts over the past year, and Chatrie just handed those parents a Supreme Court precedent to point to.
Some parents are filing opt-out forms with their districts and demanding to know exactly what these programs collect once the device leaves the building.
Most districts still cannot give a straight answer.
That should terrify you more than the robbery ever did.
Sources:
- Katie Allen, "Supreme Court Data Privacy Ruling Threatens EdTech That Tracks Students' Parents 24/7," The Federalist, July 14, 2026.
- Jay Rogers, "Supreme Court Answered One Privacy Question, Then Dodged the Big One," Washington Examiner, June 2026.
- Chatrie v. United States, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center.
- "School Chromebooks at Home Spark 2026 Privacy Showdown: Who Really Controls the Filter?" Windows News, July 2026.
- "Google Hit With Lawsuit Over Data Collection on School Kids," Bloomberg Law, November 4, 2024.
- "Class Action Lawsuit Claims School Security Software Company Violated Students' Privacy," K-12 Dive, July 21, 2023.
