Aeries Settles Data Breach Lawsuit for $1.75M; Illuminate Suit is Dismissed – For Now

Kristal Kuykendall reports on the very different outcomes of two class action lawsuits stemming from breaches involving EdTech. Both of these lawsuits’ outcomes have been reported previously on DataBreaches, but this article says that both cases, despite the vastly different outcomes so far, should put EdTech vendors on notice. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of students at San Dieguito Union High School District, a federal judge in March gave final approval to a settlement ordering Aeries Software to pay $1.75 million to members of the class, which includes nearly 100,000 former and current San Dieguito Union students whose PII was compromised in a November 2019 breach of Aeries databases. Last week, a proposed national class-action lawsuit filed against Illuminate Education over its January 2022 data breach was dismissed by the same court, the U.S. District Court Central District of California, Western Division. The judge dismissing the lawsuit against Illuminate — formed when civil suits filed last summer in New York and California were combined — wrote in his decision that the plaintiffs did not successful establish standing to sue or that actual harm was imminent, and the court gave the plaintiffs 21 days to amend the complaint and re-file. Read more at THE Journal.