IHAQ wrote: ↑Wed Dec 14, 2022 10:20 am
I think the teacher and other pupils have a reasonable expectation of privacy when in the classroom setting. The child who took the photo and sent it to Cline might have broken the law. Perhaps someone familiar with Utah law might chime in.
The term "reasonable expectation of privacy" is a little tricky because it is used in two different contexts: (1) the fourth amendment (protection against unreasonable search and seizure by the government); and (2) invasion of privacy by non-government actors. It's relatively to find the answer to your question: most state codes are online and searchable by keywords. Utah is no exception.
But that won't answer your question about whether the adult (odds are overwhelming that the student was not a child) who took the picture violated the Utah privacy statute. Reasonable expectation of privacy is more than saying something like "I didn't expect that someone would take my picture in a classroom. It's all very context specific but, in general, the more people who have the information, the less privacy a person a reasonable person can expect. If you attend a course at a university, everyone in the class knows you are there, as well as the teacher and any number of people connected with the university itself. In that setting, it's hard to argue that the fact that you are taking the class is entitled to privacy protections. On the other hand, if the university planted hidden microphones in the classroom that intercepted conversations between you and a friend that were clearly intended to be private (i.e., you made sure no one else was around, you used quiet voices, you told the friend that she needed to keep the conversation confidential) it is much more likely that a court would agree that you had a reasonable expectation of privacy because of the precautions you took.
Now, the university itself, or even the teacher, could create a reasonable expectation of privacy by having rules or policies prohibiting use of cameras during class. Or divulging the content of lectures outside of class. But it would certainly be odd to prohibit student from discussing what they learned in a class outside of the classroom. It would be kind of antithetical to the project of educating students.
So, I doubt that taking the photo or texting it to her mother violates any law. However, if the teacher is harmed by the Facebook posting, the teacher may have a cause of action against the mother under a privacy related tort known as "false light." It may be literally true that the instructor used the words and phrases "“not masculine," "not feminine," "Christlike," and "Androgyny is the key,”" but I'd bet good money that the way the tweet combined them misrepresents what the instructor actually said in away that makes her appear as contradicting church doctrine. False light applies to statements that are literally true, but are incomplete or taken out of context in a way that creates a false impression. That could be determined by an audio recording of the lecture.
