Parents Sue School for Use of Increasingly Popular ID Scan Technology
A Texas couple has filed suit against their local school district in what is believed to be the first legal challenge of an increasingly popular background check system that screens school visitors against a privately maintained sex offender registry.
The parents aren’t on any sex offender registries, but they object to the Lake Travis school district’s use of the Raptor Systems scan, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Parents Yvonne and Larry Meadows argue that the background checks violate their constitutional rights to freedom of association and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
Some 5,000 schools across the country use Houston-based Raptor Systems to scan driver’s licenses and other ID cards. The scan picks up name, birth date, license number and photo, then checks it against the company’s national database of sex offenders.
The Meadowses object to a private company having control such sensitive data. Yvonne Meadows had reportedly been barred from several school events because of her refusal to hand over her driver’s license. The couple now homeschools their children.
“Raptor sold (their system) on this ‘registered sex offenders, we need to be on guard,’ idea, but it was primarily a visitor management system,” Meadows told the paper.
Lisa McBride, Lake Travis’ lawyer, responded that the district thinks its visitor access system is reasonable and fully complies with state and federal law.
