The Federal Trade Commission announced this month plans to  over a massive 2021 data breach. The move added to a long list of government actions against the firm since hackers broke into its systems and made off with the sensitive information of more than 10 million students.

Three state attorneys general have also now imposed fines and security mandates on the company following allegations it misled customers about its cybersecurity safeguards and waited nearly two years to notify some school districts of the widespread data breach.

The in their efforts to hold Illuminate accountable are parents and students.

Their pursuit hit a wall in September when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a federal lawsuit filed by the breach victims. The court, ruling on a case filed in California, found that the theft of their personal data — including grades, special education information and medical records — didn’t constitute a concrete harm.

In the news

The latest in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown: In many cities across the country, from New Orleans to Minneapolis, resisting federal immigration enforcement means keeping kids in school. | 

• Trump’s mass deportation effort has had a particularly damaging effect on the child care industry, which is heavily reliant on immigrant preschool teachers — most of them working in the U.S. legally — who have found themselves “wracked by anxiety over possible encounters with ICE.” | 
  
• ‘Culture of fear’: Immigrant students across the country have increasingly found themselves targets of bullying since the beginning of Trump’s second term, according to a new survey of high school principals. | 

A Kansas middle school will no longer assign Chromebooks to each student: Computers have had “a wonderful place in education,” the school’s principal said. But schools have “simply immersed students too much in technology.” | 

A Florida middle school went into lockdown after an automated threat detection system was triggered by a clarinet. A student was walking in the hallway “holding a musical instrument as if it were a weapon.” |

‘Got what he deserved’: A California teacher has filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against her school after she was suspended for a Facebook post calling right-wing political activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk a “propaganda-spewing racist misogynist” a day after he was murdered. | 

• In Florida, two teachers have filed separate First Amendment lawsuits after they were punished for social media posts critical of Kirk after his death. | 
  
• Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott announced a partnership with Turning Point USA to create local chapters of the group at every high school campus in the state, vowing “meaningful disciplinary action” against any educators who stand in the way. | 
  
• Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, will field questions from “young evangelicals, prominent religious leaders and figures across the political spectrum” during a live town hall Saturday on CBS News moderated by its new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss. | 
  
• ICYMI: The Trump administration’s First Amendment crackdown in the wake of the activist’s violent death has left student free speech on even shakier ground. | 

Following a shakeup in its ranks by vaccine skeptic and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee voted to overturn a decades-long recommendation that newborn babies be immunized for hepatitis B — a policy credited with decimating the highly contagious virus in infants. | 

• A measles outbreak in South Carolina schools is accelerating, with some unvaccinated students in a second 21-day quarantine since the beginning of the academic year. |   

A photo that circulated online depicted California high school students lying in the shape of a swastika on the grass of a football field. Chaos ensued. | 

‘It feels nasty. It’s gross.’: Controversy has come to a head at a California high school after an adult film producer rented out the campus gym for a raunchy livestream. “The first thing I see is a full-grown adult, an adult man wearing a baby costume and being fed milk from a baby bottle,” one student observer noted. | 

Two Texas teenagers allegedly conspired to carry out a school shooting at their high school but the plot was thwarted after classmates reported text messages with their plans to school police. “Don’t come to school on Monday,” one of the messages warned. | 

ICYMI @The74

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Information about a cyberattack at the district is limited — aside from data breach notices in several states. In to the Maine attorney general’s office, the district disclosed that it suffered a “hacking” incident. On Aug. 3, the district “experienced a network disruption” that rendered its systems inoperable due to “a sophisticated cyber-attack.” Nearly seven months later, on Feb. 29, 2024, school officials began informing individual victims that their Social Security numbers had been exposed in the breach. 

In to the Washington state attorney general’s office, the district acknowledged that 771 state residents had their information stolen, including their names, Social Security numbers, banking information, dates of birth and health insurance and medical information. The total number of affected individuals, according to the disclosure in Maine, was 30,373.

School officials couldn’t be reached for comment.