The Hampton-Anderson lawsuit is a case brought by Virginia attorney Tim Anderson against Hampton City Schools on behalf of Lamisha Richards, whose nonverbal autistic son was left on a school bus on October 2 and who says the district then refused to let her view the surveillance footage of what happened to him. The suit’s central legal question is whether a parent in Virginia has the right to see school video of a safety incident involving their own child.1WAVY. Hampton School Denies Liability in 10-Year-Old’s Slip and Fall Accident
What Happened on the Bus
Richards’ son, a student with special needs, fell asleep on his morning bus and was not discovered when the other children were dropped off at his school. The bus continued on to pick up and drop off high school students, and Richards says she went “multiple hours” without being notified. Her son was returned only after the bus completed that later route, and the school principal eventually called her.2WTKR. Hampton Mother Upset After Son Left on School Bus
Hampton City Schools disputed the account, saying the child was “never alone on the bus.” Richards said she was told the driver and monitor were removed from the route and fired. The district declined to confirm any discipline, citing personnel privacy, and said it opened an investigation once officials learned of the situation. Richards pulled her son from bus transportation. “The trust is not there,” she told reporters, and she began looking at legal options.2WTKR. Hampton Mother Upset After Son Left on School Bus
Why the District Refused to Release the Video
Anderson’s suit turns on the district’s refusal to show Richards the bus footage. In a separate Hampton case involving a cafeteria slip-and-fall at Bassette Elementary, the district gave a written reason for denying a parent’s FOIA request for video: the footage “cannot be released, as it is not considered part of your child’s scholastic record and includes footage that identifies other students.” That is the same rationale at issue in the Anderson matter.1WAVY. Hampton School Denies Liability in 10-Year-Old’s Slip and Fall Accident
Anderson takes the opposite view. “From a legal standpoint, every parent is entitled to see what happens to their child in a school involving a safety incident,” he said.1WAVY. Hampton School Denies Liability in 10-Year-Old’s Slip and Fall Accident
What FERPA and Virginia Law Actually Say
Two bodies of law govern access to school surveillance video, and they don’t say the same thing.
Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a surveillance video is an “education record” when it is directly related to a student and maintained by the school. Video used in discipline, video capturing a health emergency or injury, and footage that focuses on a specific student generally qualify. Parents have the right to inspect and review video that counts as their child’s education record. FERPA does not generally require schools to hand over copies, and it lets a school deny access if it cannot reasonably redact other students who appear in the footage.3U.S. Department of Education. FAQs on Photos and Videos Under FERPA
Virginia law reaches further. Virginia Code § 22.1-289(A) defines a “scholastic record” to include records directly related to a student that are maintained by an educational agency, and the statute expressly states the record may be kept in any format, including “video or audio tape, film, microfilm, and microfiche.” Section 22.1-289(D) requires that every student’s scholastic record be available to the student and the parent or guardian for inspection during the regular school day, and the statute forbids schools from editing or withholding material from a scholastic record except as otherwise provided by law.4Virginia Code Commission. Code of Virginia, Title 22.1, Chapter 14, Article 5
The dispute in the Anderson case sits inside that gap. Hampton City Schools treats general surveillance footage as something other than a scholastic record because it was not created about a particular child. Anderson’s position is that once a safety incident occurs and the video captures it, the footage is directly related to that child and Virginia’s statute gives the parent a right to inspect it.
A Parallel Complaint in the Same District
The Bassette Elementary case is not part of the Anderson suit, but it involves the same district and the same refusal. Angelic Alleyne filed a FOIA request in May 2025 for cafeteria video after her 10-year-old daughter, London Elliott, slipped and fell. Hampton City Schools denied the request on the scholastic-record and other-students grounds quoted above. Alleyne said parents effectively have to “get a lawyer to get the video.”1WAVY. Hampton School Denies Liability in 10-Year-Old’s Slip and Fall Accident
Who Tim Anderson Is
Anderson is a former Virginia state delegate whose practice includes litigation against school districts. He also represents 112 anonymous plaintiffs — teachers, bus drivers, counselors, therapists, custodians, and cafeteria workers among them — in an August 2025 suit in Virginia Beach Circuit Court accusing the Virginia Beach City Public Schools superintendent of concealing health insurance premium increases until after employees signed their 2025–2026 contracts.5The Virginian-Pilot. Virginia Beach Schools Lawsuit