Deciphering the Supremacy of Federal Funding Conditions: Why State Open Records Law Must Yield to FERPA

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) re-quires that universities receiving federal funds through the U.S. Department of Education maintain baseline student privacy protections. Simultaneously, state open records laws require public universities, as state actors, to disclose certain types of information upon a request from the public. When both statutes apply to requested information, courts have reached opposite results as to the universities’ obligations. Some have concluded that the records must remain private because of FERPA. Others have concluded that the state open records law requires disclosure regardless, because FERPA is merely a funding condition and not a federal prohibition. This Note proposes a framework for more uniformly resolving the relationship between FERPA and state open records laws. It argues that FERPA is a valid federal conditional funding statute under the current unconstitutional conditions doctrine. As a result, the Supremacy Clause must dictate the outcome when FERPA and a state open records law conflict. Therefore, when a state open records law would require dis-closure of information protected by FERPA, FERPA must trump the contradictory state law requirements as a binding federal law

Sometimes You’re in, Sometimes You’re out: Undocumented Immigrants and the Fifth Circuit’s Definition of “The People” in \u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Portillo-Muñoz\u3c/em\u3e

On June 29, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in United States v. Portillo-Muñoz, upheld a federal statute prohibiting firearms possession by undocumented immigrants by concluding that undocumented immigrants are not part of “the people” granted Second Amendment rights. In doing so, the Fifth Circuit created an unprecedented distinction between types of constitutional rights and used that distinction to determine those to whom the rights apply. This Comment argues that courts should be wary of creating categories of constitutional rights, since such categories invite arbitrary classifications and allow legislatures to grant benefits to some people and not others