Kirkland Secures First Dismissal of Children's Privacy Case in EdTech Industry

Martin Roth, Olivia Adendorff and Alyssa Kalisky were recognized for their recent victory representing Instructure in class-action claims involving data privacy concerns in this article by The Recorder.

A team at Kirkland & Ellis knocked out state and federal class action claims last week against the company Instructure in what appears to be the first full dismissal of a case in a slate of similar privacy suits targeting the education technology industry and its alleged misuse of "millions" of children's data.

The Kirkland team was led by litigators Martin L. Roth in Chicago, who argued the motion; Olivia Adendorff in Dallas and Washington, D.C.; and Alyssa C. Kalisky in Chicago.

Kirkland referred requests for comment to an Instructure spokesperson, who said in an email, "We appreciate the court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit, which was based on claims that were wholly unsupported and without merit. At Instructure, protecting student privacy is at the core of what we do. Our products utilize data only to deliver our services to customers. The trust we have built with our customers is paramount. We are fully transparent about how we handle privacy and security, and we build those protections into every product and service.”

In a final judgment issued on Aug. 14, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, who presides in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, dismissed the plaintiffs' individual claims on the merits with prejudice and the claims on behalf of the putative class without prejudice. The plaintiffs' counsel plans to appeal the judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The court initially gave plaintiffs leave to amend all but two of their claims in an order granting the defendant's motion to dismiss filed on Aug. 4, but plaintiffs decided not to pursue an amended claim after conferring with defense counsel.

Blumenfeld found in the Aug. 4 order that plaintiffs had not "plausibly alleged any specific facts about the taking or use of their data," calling their first amended complaint "an ambitious pleading that fails to satisfy the basic requirements of Rule 8," which calls for a “short and plain statement of the claim[s] showing that the pleader is entitled to relief."

The judge also held that the plaintiffs were privy in part to some of Instructure's data collection practices and that they had failed to properly allege that Instructure exploited their information under Rule 11, which preempts the filing of frivolous lawsuits. The plaintiffs, Blumenfeld wrote, "are not entitled to use litigation as a fishing expedition to seek discovery and find out whether Defendant misused the data."

The original putative class action was filed against Instructure by parents on behalf of their minor children on March 7 in the Central District of California.

Instructure, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, provides one of the most popular learning management systems in the U.S., Canvas, a cloud-based software and digital hub that schools, teachers and students can use to access online course materials.

The nine-count, 82-page complaint alleged that Instructure siphons the information of "tens of millions of school-aged children in the United States" through its "K-12- marketed products, corporate acquisitions, and third-party data-sharing agreements." Plaintiffs contended that Instructure's collection of children's personally identifiable violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Causes of action included violations of the Federal Wiretap Act; the California Invasion of Privacy Act; the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution; the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act; and California's Unfair Competition Law.

The plaintiffs, backed by Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise in Los Angeles and the EdTech Law Center in Austin, Texas, filed a first amended complaint on May 8.

Blumenfeld's ruling could prove precedential in a handful of privacy cases currently pending against companies in the "EdTech" space, which accuse them of flouting laws such as the Federal Wiretap Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act by allegedly mining and monetizing the data of K-12 students without their consent.

The driving force behind privacy litigation against companies in the education technology space is the EdTech Law Center, which has spearheaded similar children's privacy claims against Google and EdTech providers PowerSchool Holdings Inc., SeeSaw Learning Inc. and IXL Learning Inc. PowerSchool is currently embroiled in multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of California over its alleged failure to prevent a Dec. 2024 data breach exposing the sensitive information of roughly 62 million students and 10 million teachers.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed an amicus brief in favor of the plaintiffs in response to IXL's motion to compel arbitration in a children's privacy case filed by the EdTech Law Center. The motion was denied by District Judge Rita Lin in the Northern District of California, and the IXL case is now on appeal before the Ninth Circuit.

Counsel at Peiffer Wolf did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment, and the EdTech Law Center declined to comment at this time.