Dive Brief:

• The Wyoming state legislature will soon consider a bill that would ban districts from requesting access to students’ social media accounts or viewing them without permission.
• The state’s Task Force on Digital Information Privacy advanced the bill on Thursday, and now the state legislature will have to decide whether to take it up during its next session.
• The law only applies to non-school-related accounts.

Dive Insight:

The motivation for the bill is that districts accessing the accounts could expose students' information, as well as the information of those they interact with. Law enforcement will retain the right to access student accounts — but only with a warrant.

A similar bill passed the Maryland state legislature this summer. That law banned colleges and universities from accessing the social media accounts of current or prospective students but allowed universities to retain information gathered when students were using school computers. And Maryland’s not alone: In total, 13 states have passed similar laws; Wyoming would be the 14th.