See You In Court – June 2026

Pamela Parent has been on social media incessantly of late, railing against Coach Rock, the Girls Softball coach at Nutmeg Memorial High School.  Pamela is upset that Coach Rock dismissed her daughter from the team after another girl on the team reported that the daughter had been drinking at a party.  Pamela believes her daughter’s claim that she was not drinking, and Pamela has been blasting the Coach for his action.  Her posts have been vicious, such as “Coach Rock, a terrible coach and worse person, is a meanie who gets his jollies by inflicting pain on his players.”  Despite the thick skin that Coach Rock developed over his long experience as a coach, these attacks have upset Coach Rock, and he reached out for help to Bob Bombast, veteran member of the Nutmeg Board of Education.

Bob has long respected Coach Rock for his firm hand in coaching various sports, and he told Coach Rock that he would take care of it.  He then reached out to Pamela and proposed an in-person meeting over breakfast to “hear her out” on her concerns about Coach Rock.  Pamela quickly accepted Bob’s offer, and she and Bob agreed to meet at The Greasy Spoon, a favorite breakfast spot in Nutmeg.

When they sat down together, Bob patiently listened to Pamela’s rant about Coach Rock and his dictatorial style.  “My daughter wasn’t drinking,” Pamela insisted, “but even if she were, everyone deserves a second change.”

Sensing an opportunity to resolve the matter, Bob leaned forward.  “What if I ask Coach Rock to give your daughter another chance?  To be sure, Coach Rock thinks it is very important for students to man up and accept responsibility for her actions.  However, if she admits her mistake, I think I can talk Coach Rock into taking her back.”

Pamela told Bob that she would think about it.  Bob’s hopes that he might resolve the conflict between Pamela and Coach Rock were dashed, however, when he received an email from a friend.  It contained a link to a post by Pamela that included a .wav file with their entire conversation at The Greasy Spoon, which Pamela had secretly recorded.  Bob was further incensed by Pamela’s related comments.  He was particularly upset by Pamela’s claim that his telling Pamela that her daughter should “man up” was disrespectful to her, her daughter, and to women everywhere. 

Bob decided to address his concerns directly with Pamela, and he called her right up.  Pamela responded to Bob’s indignation over her secretly recording their conversation, however, simply by telling him that her actions were legal and that she had every right to let the world know what she thinks of Bob and his good friend, Coach Rock.

Pamela’s antagonistic response to his concerns took Bob by surprise, and he asked Pamela if she was recording their telephone conversation as well.  Pamela responded simply by saying that was for her to know and for Bob to find out, and she hung up on him.  

At the next meeting of the Nutmeg Board of Education, Bob publicly denounced Pamela for secretly recording him, and he demanded that the Board take action.  Board member Mal Content told Bob, however, that this situation was Bob’s problem and not a Board concern.  Bob pushed back, saying that, if parents can secretly record his private conversations, all Board members are at risk.  Bob urged the Board to adopt a policy prohibiting anyone from secretly recording any Board member engaged in official business on behalf of the Nutmeg Board of Education.

Is the Nutmeg Board of Education empowered to adopt such a policy?

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Bob’s concerns are legitimate, but there are limits to what the boards of education can do to prohibit such recordings.  Board members, therefore,  must be careful and remember that whatever they say or write may be saved for posterity by someone else in electronic form.

Connecticut law draws a distinction between in-person conversations and those over the telephone.  As to the latter, Connecticut is a “two-party” state, which means that both parties to a conversation over the telephone must be aware that the conversation is being recorded.  The Recording Statute, Connecticut General Statutes § 52-570d, establishes a private right of action against a person who uses “any instrument, device or equipment to record an oral private telephonic communication” unless there is (1) consent of all participants, (2) prior notice to all participants, or (3) a beep tone alerting all participants.  There are a number of exceptions to the prohibition in this statute, however, including emergency personnel, law enforcement personnel, recipients of threats of extortion, bodily harm or other unlawful requests or demands, or persons who receive calls that occur “repeatedly or at an extremely inconvenient hour.”

The rules are different for in-person meetings.  Nothing in the statutes prohibits a person from recording an in-person conversation without the knowledge of the other party, and thus Pamela’s secretly recording her conversation with Bob did not violate the law.  There are, however, two potential limitations to the right to secretly record another person. 

First, the person making the recording must be a participant in the conversation.  Recording conversations by others without their knowledge would violate the Eavesdropping Statute, Connecticut General Statutes §§ 53a-187 through 53a-189.  Adopted in 1969, the Eavesdropping Statute provides that “a person is guilty of eavesdropping when he unlawfully engages in wiretapping or mechanical overhearing of a conversation.”  “Mechanical overhearing of a conversation” is defined as the “intentional overhearing or recording of a conversation or discussion, without the consent of at least one party thereto, by a person not present thereat, by means of any instrument, device or equipment.”  The consent of one of the parties defeats the prohibition, and thus any recording under such circumstances is not a crime.

The fact that secretly recording an in-person conversation is not a violation of law does not make it right.  Indeed, WVIT, Inc. v. Gray. No. CV 950547689S, 1996 WL 649334 (Conn. Super. Ct. Oct. 25, 1996), holds that secretly recording coworkers in the workplace for personal reasons can be an actionable invasion of privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.  Restatement (Second) of Torts 652B (1977).

Here, the recording Pamela made was neither in the workplace nor in the school setting, and the Nutmeg Board of Education would have no jurisdiction to regulate Pamela’s conduct.  However, the fact that parents, students, and employees now have the technical capacity to record conversations secretly invites consideration of whether boards of education may wish to address this concern through policy.  The CABE Policy Service has addressed this issue, and interested board members should reach out to CABE for more information.

This is a complicated issue, and many recordings in the school setting are benign.  Moreover, recording is expressly authorized at any “meeting” as defined the Freedom of Information Act, and neither prior notice nor warning is required.  Conn. Gen. Stat. § 1-226.  Nonetheless, the social cost of allowing secret recordings is significant, and this issue may be worth further consideration by boards of education in Connecticut.