3 min read On November 10, 2026, Microsoft filed a motion in Washington state court seeking dismissal of a class action lawsuit in which four students accuse the company of illegally collecting personal data through school software, including Minecraft Education and Microsoft 365. The company argues that part of the claims are preempted by federal law, and that the students had no reasonable expectation of privacy while using tools provided by their school.
What the students allege
The lawsuit, filed under the case name A.W. et al. v. Microsoft Corp., claims the company collects data from over a million K-12 students in Washington state far beyond what's needed to deliver education. According to the complaint, Microsoft gathers three categories of information: educational records such as grades and attendance, behavioral data including browsing history and app usage patterns, and telemetry signals that track physical interactions with the device, such as typing speed and cursor movements.
The students claim Microsoft uses this data to build detailed profiles and generate student analytics, then monetizes that information without informed parental consent. The complaint highlights that tools like Minecraft Education, used in thousands of schools as a platform for teaching STEM subjects, collect data in the background while students carry out ordinary classroom tasks.
The health data argument
One of the more interesting elements of the lawsuit is its reliance on Washington state's consumer health data protection law, the My Health My Data Act. The students' attorneys argue that the inferences Microsoft draws from children's behavior, including assessments of stress levels and wellbeing, qualify as consumer health data requiring explicit, informed consent before collection. This is an unusual legal approach, since such laws are typically associated with health and fitness apps, not educational software or games.
Microsoft's position
In its court filing, Microsoft argues that part of the allegations should be dismissed because they are covered by federal law on student data protection, which precludes pursuing parallel claims at the state level. The company also argues that students using tools provided by their school, as part of mandatory coursework, could not have had reasonable expectations of privacy regarding their activity within that software.
Several law firms are representing the plaintiffs, including Emery Reddy, Peiffer Wolf, Almeida Law Group and Hecht Partners, while Microsoft is represented by, among others, Davis Wright Tremaine, pointing to the scale of the proceedings underway.
Minecraft Education at the center of the dispute
Minecraft Education has existed for a decade as a classroom-oriented version of the game, featuring ready-made lessons in math, coding and science. It's precisely the program's widespread presence in American schools, alongside Microsoft 365, that made it one of the products named in the lawsuit as a channel for collecting data on minors. For parents and teachers using Minecraft Education in Poland, where the program is also sometimes used in computer science classes, the case may be a signal to check what data licensed educational software actually collects and under what terms.
What happens next
The Washington court has not yet decided whether it will grant Microsoft's motion to dismiss or allow the case to move to the next stage of proceedings. The outcome of this ruling could matter beyond the case of these Washington students, since similar allegations about data collection by school software are also surfacing against other educational service providers in the United States.
