## Facts

- A New Jersey public school district administered “Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors” to students in grades 7–12 during the 1999 school year.
- The survey asked about sensitive topics, including substance use, sexual activity, violence, suicide attempts, family relationships, and views on matters of public interest.
- The survey was intended to be voluntary and anonymous: forms omitted names and student identifiers, instructed students not to write their names, and results were reported only in aggregate.
- Some parents and students objected to the survey’s content and the lack of clear notice about how to opt out.
- Plaintiffs alleged the survey was effectively involuntary because it was administered in class with teachers present and without a meaningful alternative.
- Plaintiffs also alleged the survey was not truly anonymous because students wrote homeroom numbers or otherwise believed responses could be traced to them.
- Plaintiffs asserted statutory claims under FERPA and PPRA and constitutional claims based on informational privacy, compelled speech, and parental rights.

## Issues

1. Whether administering a survey containing highly personal questions to public school students violated a Fourteenth Amendment informational privacy right where plaintiffs claimed participation was effectively involuntary and not anonymous.
2. Whether requiring or pressuring students to answer the survey amounted to unconstitutional compelled speech under the First Amendment.
3. Whether the survey infringed parents’ substantive due process right to direct their children’s upbringing and education.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the school defendants on all remaining constitutional claims.
- The court assumed for summary judgment purposes that there was a genuine dispute about whether the survey was truly voluntary.
- Even on that assumption, the court held there was no constitutional violation because the survey was anonymous and results were disclosed only in aggregate without identifying any student.
- The court rejected the compelled-speech claim because the survey did not force students to affirm an ideological message.
- The court rejected the parental-rights claim because the survey did not displace parental decision-making in a manner that rises to a federal constitutional violation.

## Legal Principles

- A constitutional informational privacy claim generally requires actual or threatened disclosure of identifiable personal information; anonymous collection and aggregate reporting ordinarily do not constitute actionable disclosure.
- The First Amendment compelled-speech doctrine primarily targets government compulsion to affirm or display an ideological message; requesting factual survey responses, even on sensitive subjects, is not compelled ideological speech.
- Parents have substantive due process interests in directing upbringing and education, but routine school activities and information-gathering tied to educational purposes do not violate that right absent a substantial intrusion comparable to state displacement of parental authority.
- Alleged deficiencies in notice or opt-out procedures, without identifiable disclosure of student information or coercion to adopt beliefs, do not by themselves establish a federal constitutional claim under these theories.

## Conclusion

The Third Circuit held that a school district’s administration of an anonymous student survey on sensitive topics, with only aggregate disclosure of results, did not violate students’ constitutional privacy rights, did not constitute unconstitutional compelled speech, and did not infringe parents’ substantive due process rights, even assuming students experienced practical pressure to participate.


C.N. v. Ridgewood Bd. of Educ., 430 F.3d 159 (3d Cir. 2005)