Experts Warn Of FERPA Hurdles Amid DOJ’s Harvard Admission Documents Lawsuit

While Harvard has refused to bow down, legal experts highlight how the lawsuit having “nothing to do with protecting the civil rights of any student.”

After the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Harvard University over allegations that the school isn’t complying with the 2023 affirmative action ban, legal experts are warning the Trump Administration of potential privacy hurdles ahead, according to The Harvard Crimson.

The Feb. 13 suit could present violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) – a federal law banning student records that prevent individual applicants from being disclosed.

Since the DOJ is demanding applicant-level admissions data, such as grades, standardized test scores, race, and internal evaluations, FERPA could be violated when data points are combined, even after names are removed, because this makes individual students identifiable.

A number of legal experts are sounding the alarm, including Vinay Harpalani, a University of New Mexico law professor, who says he would be surprised if the administration is successful in its demands. “That risks particular privacy concerns there,” Harpalani said.

“If the individual data from a single applicant can all be linked — all the data, the grade, the test score, their race, ethnicity, other features about them — then that applicant might be able to be identified as an individual. And that could be problematic, that could run in violation of the FERPA.”

According to The Hill, the DOJ, under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, claims the Ivy League institution, which was at the forefront of the Supreme Court’s controversial reversal, has avoided document release for over 10 months. Bondi says the suit is a matter of wanting “better from our nation’s educational institutions.”

Harvard has failed to disclose the data we need to ensure that its admissions are free of discrimination — we will continue fighting to put merit over DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] across America,” the AG said.

However, Jonathan D. Glater, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, says the department may hit some blocks since FERPA doesn’t give them authority to access student admissions records as they are not a listed entity.

He continues to claim that the DOJ may be out of its league when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of admissions decisions and the difficulty of evaluating discretionary variables.

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

“The College does not admit everyone with perfect test scores and perfect grades, for example. Other factors are at pla,y and the process is nuanced. I do not know how nuanced a process the DOJ is prepared to tolerate.”

While a Harvard spokesperson says the school “will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” Boston University law professor Jonathan P. Feingold touched on the lawsuit having “nothing to do with protecting the civil rights of any student.”

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

There may be some truth to Feingold’s viewpoint. The latest lawsuit is one of several launched by President Donald Trump and his administration against Harvard. President Trump has launched legal action against the school and demanded that it pay a $1 billion fine, following a report from The New York Times that his administration was stepping back from a cash request in negotiations with the school.

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