Experts Warn of FERPA Hurdles During Harvard Lawsuit Over DOJ Admissions Documents

After the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Harvard University over allegations that the school is not complying with its 2023 affirmative action ban, legal experts warn the Trump administration of possible privacy obstacles forwardaccording to The Harvard Crimson.

The Feb. 13 lawsuit could raise violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) – a federal law that prohibits student records that prevent individual applicants from being made public.

Because the DOJ requires candidate-level admissions data such as grades, standardized test scores, race, and internal evaluations, FERPA may be violated when data points are combined even after names are removed because it makes individual students identifiable.trustworthy.

A number of legal experts are sounding the alarm, including Vinay Harpalani, a law professor at the University of New Mexico, who says he would be surprised if the government makes good on its demands. “That poses special privacy issues,” Harpalani said.

“If a single applicant’s individual data could all be linked together – all the data, the grade, the test score, their race, their ethnicity, other characteristics about them – then that applicant could potentially be identified as an individual. And that could be problematic, that could be a violation of FERPA.”

According to The hillThe DOJ, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleges that the Ivy League institution, which spearheaded the controversial Supreme Court reversal, has avoided releasing documents for more than 10 months. Bondi says the lawsuit is a matter of “wanting better from our country’s educational institutions.”

Harvard has failed to release the data we need to ensure admissions are free from discrimination – we will continue to fight to put merit over DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] across America,” the AG said.

However, Jonathan D. Glater, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says the department may be in trouble because FERPA does not give them authority to access student admissions data since they are not a publicly traded entity.

He continues to claim that the DOJ may be outIt’s in a class when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of admissions decisions and the difficulty of evaluating discretionary variables.

“Students’ personally identifiable information is protected by FERPA. The DOJ is not on the list and this is not part of a criminal investigation, so I’m not sure how this works,” the law professor explained.

“For example, the college does not admit everyone with perfect test scores and perfect grades. There are other factors at play and the process is nuanced. I don’t know how nuanced a process the DOJ is willing to tolerate.”

While a Harvard spokesperson said the school “will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or waive its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” Boston University professor Jonathan P. Feingold noted that the lawsuit “has nothing to do with protecting the civil rights of any student.”

“This gamble on the part of the federal government is part of a much broader effort to cripple the ability of institutions to actually have fair admissions processes that take into account a whole host of factors beyond standardized test scores,” Feingold said.

There may be some truth in Feingold’s position. The latest lawsuit is one of many filed against Harvard by President Donald Trump and his administration. President Trump has taken legal action against the school, demanding it pay a $1 billion fine, following a report from The New York Times that his administration reneged on a request for cash in negotiations with the school.

He also suffered a major blow in September 2025, when a judge ruled that the White House’s $2.7 billion freeze on Harvard’s federal funding was unconstitutional.

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