PowerSchool Intends to 'Virgorously Defend Itself' From Texas Lawsuit
PowerSchool "intends to vigorously defend itself" against the lawsuit that the Texas attorney general filed Wednesday, a spokesperson for the education software company told Privacy Daily in an email. AG Ken Paxton's (R) lawsuit charged that PowerSchool’s failure to protect the personal information of almost 900,000 Texas schoolchildren and educators in a data breach late last year was a violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act (see 2509030059).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
PowerSchool has "worked nonstop to minimize any impact on students, families, educators, and school districts," the spokesperson said in the email Wednesday night. "We quickly notified relevant regulators on our customers’ behalf in applicable jurisdictions as well as students (or their parents/guardians) and educators in the U.S. and Canada." In addition, PowerSchool "offered complimentary identity protection services" and, "if applicable, credit monitoring services."
"On March 7, we shared the final CrowdStrike Incident Report with our customers and called out key learnings from the incident on our website," the spokesperson added.
In addition to violations of Texas state law, the complaint claims that the software company benefits from using school-aged children’s data as part of product development and selling it to third parties. Tennessee has also sued PowerSchool over the data breach (see 2505120026), and a class-action lawsuit was filed in California (see 2501220057).
Along with defending itself from Paxton's lawsuit, the company will "continue to prioritize the customers, communities, and individuals PowerSchool serves," the spokesperson said.