An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.

In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.

“The defendants continued on a pervasive, destructive and merciless path of threats, intimidation and coercion to impact and derail [our son’s] future and his exemplary record,” the Harris family alleges in its lawsuit, which was initially filed in state superior court before being removed to a federal district court.

Hingham Public Schools, however, claims that its student handbook prohibited the use of “unauthorized technology” and “unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own work.”

The district said in a recent motion to dismiss that the discipline administered to the Harris’ son was “relatively lenient” and that a ruling to the contrary would “invite dissatisfied parents and students to challenge day-to-day discipline, even grading of students, in state and federal courts.”

Almost immediately after OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022,  schools recognized the threat that free and easily accessible generative AI tools posed to academic integrity. Some districts tried banning the technology entirely for students and then reversed course. State departments of education have slowly been rolling out guidance for local districts, but in many parts of the country, there is no clear consensus on how students should be allowed to use generative AI.

A national survey conducted by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that schools are increasingly disciplining students for using AI and noted that historically marginalized students—including students of color and English language learners—tend to be punished disproportionately for violating school rules,

The Harris family alleges that their son was unfairly targeted by the Hingham school district because it applied discipline inconsistently. After the cheating incident, the district didn’t place their son in the National Honor Society, they claim, but it had previously allowed a student who used AI to write an English paper to join the society.

The district replied in its motion to dismiss that the Harris’s son has, in fact, been allowed to join the National Honor Society after initially being deferred.

The lawsuit also questions whether using AI to complete assignments should be prohibited at all. It notes that the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education hasn’t issued any rules or guidance for schools on the use of the technology.

“Generative AI is an emerging landscape and its use is here to stay,” according to the lawsuit.