K12 Montana Blog

The Next FERPA Moment: What Schools Should Know About AI Chatbot Legislation

Written by Jeff Patterson | Jul 13, 2026 7:45:44 PM

If you work in a Montana school district, you already know FERPA and COPPA by heart. What you may not know is how those laws actually came to exist, and why that history matters right now.

If you work in a Montana school district, you already know FERPA and COPPA by heart. What you may not know is how those laws actually came to exist, and why that history matters right now.

How FERPA and COPPA got written

Neither law was a slow, deliberate policy exercise. FERPA passed after less than an hour of floor debate. COPPA moved even faster: an FTC survey of children's websites in spring 1998 found that 89 percent of sites surveyed collected personal information from children, only 24 percent posted a privacy policy, and just 1 percent required parental consent before collecting that data. Congress had a signed law from President Clinton within eight months of that finding. Gateway2Achieve

Both laws share a pattern: evidence of harm to children surfaced, parents and advocates pushed hard, and legislation followed fast, often faster than the industry it regulated had planned for.

Why that pattern matters again in 2026

That same pressure is building around AI chatbots, and it is moving through Congress right now. The bill to watch is the GUARD Act (Guidelines for User Age Verification and Responsible Dialogue Act), introduced by Senator Josh Hawley with bipartisan support. On April 30, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the GUARD Act unanimously, and it now awaits a vote on the Senate floor. A companion bill was introduced in the House the same day. Josh Hawley

The bill's core provisions would:

  • Bar AI companies from allowing children and teens to use AI companion chatbots K-12 Dive
  • Require any AI chatbot to clearly disclose that it is not a human being, and that it isn't a licensed professional such as a therapist or counselor
  • Require providers to implement reasonable age verification for all user accounts, and block minors from AI companion access once identified Global Policy Watch
  • Create both civil and criminal penalties for companies whose chatbots solicit sexual content from minors or encourage self-harm or violence

The bill grew out of real tragedies. Testimony before the Senate cited the case of a 14-year-old who died by suicide after months of what his mother described as manipulation and grooming by a chatbot designed to seem human and keep him endlessly engaged. K-12 Dive

Does this affect classroom AI tools?

This is the part that matters most for administrators and teachers. During the committee markup, Senator Hawley clarified that the GUARD Act would not apply to schools using AI chatbots for educational purposes. Even so, privacy experts are flagging a gray area: as more districts adopt AI tutoring tools that take on a persona or an identity students interact with directly, it can be hard to draw a clean line between an educational tool and something that functions like a companion. K-12 Dive

Other states have already moved to close that gap explicitly. Washington passed HB 2225 in March, which requires guardrails for AI companion apps that interact with children, but exempts tools used specifically for educational purposes at educational entities. Oregon passed a similar law with the same carve-out. California's SB 243, effective January 1, 2026, requires protections for chatbots interacting with known-minor users and adds annual reporting requirements to the state's Office of Suicide Prevention starting in mid-2027. K-12 Dive

California Lawyers Association

Montana has not yet introduced comparable legislation, but given how quickly this has moved in other states and at the federal level, it is reasonable to expect it will come up in a future legislative session.

What this means for your district right now

  1. Know what you're buying. When evaluating any AI-powered tool for classroom or student use, ask the vendor directly whether the tool is built to simulate ongoing relationships or personas, or whether it is a straightforward instructional tool. That distinction is exactly what regulators are trying to draw.
  2. Check disclosure practices. Even before any law requires it, a chatbot your students interact with should make clear it isn't a person.
  3. Loop in your content filtering. If your district uses Securly or a similar filtering platform, this is a good moment to confirm your policies address AI companion apps specifically, not just general web content.
  4. Watch the legislative calendar. The federal GUARD Act still needs a full Senate vote, and more states are expected to introduce similar bills before Montana's next session. We'll continue tracking this and will update you as it develops.

The larger point echoes the FERPA and COPPA story: districts and vendors that get ahead of good data governance and clear disclosure now will be far better positioned than those waiting for a law to force the issue.

Sources
View full post