Parents’ other claims rejected
The Harrises also claim that school officials engaged in a “pervasive pattern of threats, intimidation, coercion, bullying, harassment, and intimation of reprisals.” But Levenson concluded that the “plaintiffs provide little in the way of factual allegations along these lines.”
While the case isn’t over, the rejection of the preliminary injunction shows that Levenson believes the defendants are likely to win. “The manner in which RNH used Grammarly—wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted—powerfully supports Defendants’ conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion,” Levenson wrote.
While “the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced, as there is no discernible pedagogical purpose in prompting Grammarly (or any other AI tool) to generate a script, regurgitating the output without citation, and claiming it as one’s own work,” the order said.
Levenson wasn’t impressed by the parents’ claim that RNH’s constitutional right to due process was violated. The defendants “took multiple steps to confirm that RNH had in fact used AI in completing the Assignment” before imposing a punishment, he wrote. The discipline imposed “did not deprive RNH of his right to a public education,” and thus “any substantive due process claim premised on RNH’s entitlement to a public education must fail.”
Levenson concluded with a quote from a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that said the education of youth “is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges.” According to Levenson, “This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor. The public interest here weighs in favor of Defendants.”