a (temporary) win for meta glasses in the classroom
A student in Vienna, Austria has recently made the news because he has refused to stop using his Meta smart glasses at school, causing a legal dispute, and - to the surprise and outrage of many - actually preventing his expulsion. For now, he is allowed to keep wearing them and attend school until a solution is found. Why is that?
I've looked at the relevant court case documents (the interim procedural ruling W224 2346501-1) and the (final) substantive judgment W224 2346501-1 on RIS) to get the facts for the case and to try and understand the justifications for this decision.
the facts
The student started wearing the smart glasses in December 2025. News articles allege that within days of students complaining about the glasses, the school amended their house rules to forbid the glasses, yet he kept wearing them.
After repeatedly failing to adhere to the teachers' requests to stop using the glasses, he was excluded from school for multiple weeks (16th to 23rd of March, 27th March to 24th April, and 27th April to 22nd of May respectively) as a disciplinary measure. The teachers and students cited fears of secret recordings as reason for their requests. The student still didn't comply.
Aside from the issue with his smart glasses, the student was caught doing audio recordings with his phone in April 2026, refusing to stop the recording when asked to do so. Later on, he refused to prove that he didn't save the recording or that the recording was deleted.
Beginning of June 2026, the school conference applied for the student's expulsion, which was approved by the Vienna Education Directorate on June 12th, taking effect immediately, despite an appeal. The parents of the student appealed this decision, and the Directorate handed the case to the Austrian Federal Administrative Court.
the result
In July 2026, the court upheld the appeal against the immediate enforcement of the exclusion in its preliminary ruling, suspending the immediate expulsion in the meantime. The student is permitted to attend class, where he will presumably wear his glasses again.
A big part of the decision were the conclusions a pedagogical assessment came to, which stated that there was no sufficiently substantiated immediate danger in the student wearing the smart glasses. The Directorate had referred to a continuing risk to the physical safety and moral welfare of other students and people at the school if the student were allowed to keep using the glasses as a reason for the expulsion. Unfortunately, the court instead considered this an abstract assessment of risk, rather than a sufficiently specific explanation of why immediate expulsion was necessary.
Second, the assessment contained no evidence that the student had recorded other people, as teachers and students only had moments of suspicion, not actual proof he had recorded anyone (with the glasses, at least). The court decided that suspicion of recording alone was insufficient for the immediate expulsion.
Third, it wasn't clear enough to the court why the school had waited so long if it considered the risks to be so severe. The Directorate had not adequately explained why the same circumstances now constituted an acute danger requiring immediate enforcement.
These points are why the court found the parents' appeal against immediate enforcement to be justified. Basically, the first document focuses more on the immediacy with which the school suddenly wanted to expel the student plus whether the suspensive effect is granted or not, whereas the final document focuses more on whether the way the student used the glasses already fulfills legal grounds for an expulsion in general. They found that it does not.
In the second publication from August, the court overall reiterates its earlier decision and shares a little more details from the pedagogical assessment. It reveals that there are also unanswered questions around medical necessity of the glasses, and the student's ADHD diagnosis (but these are neither the point of the decision nor this blog post, so we shall skip that).
important caveats and nuance
The news about this case usually underline the fact that the student somehow "won" and is now allowed to just keep wearing them. That's cutting it a bit short for clickbait reasons.
The court decisions expressly state that its rulings on the suspensive effect against the expulsion and whether the behavior fulfills ground for expulsion does not actually decide anything on the legality of smart glasses in classes or anything about how valid or not valid certain privacy concerns are.
Under Austrian administrative procedural law, an authority seeking to exclude the suspensive effect of an appeal (which they did here - they denied the appeal of the parents, which would have normally suspended the decision, and went for immediate enforcement) must justify why this immediate enforcement is urgently necessary, taking account of the interests of all parties involved.
Kids and teens have a big interest in continuing school and are required to be there, which is why a lot of importance is placed on not excluding any student willy-nilly. § 49 of the Austrian School Education Act (Schulunterrichtsgesetz, SchUG) requires a serious breach of student duties, with the relevant educational or house-rule measures having failed, or a continuing danger. The existence of a public interest in school safety does not, by itself, establish that immediate enforcement is required, and a potential privacy risk isn't automatically be treated as proof of misconduct that fulfills the standards of § 49 SchUG.
Related: Austria also has a Schulordnung that deals with tech use at school, specifically smartphones, smartwatches and similar, in § 7(6), (7) and (8). It's unclear how old the student is, as the limit only applies to people below the 9th grade, but it at least gives grounds to see the use of smart glasses as analogous to what has been banned here for a portion of students already, so it is not as huge of a jump to possibly ban smart glasses at school entirely at some point.
However, the court decision is explicitly not an endorsement of the student's conduct. So for now, the case actually doesn't support a view that students have an unconditional right to wear smart glasses during lessons, or that schools are prohibited from restricting smart glasses. Thankfully!
the future
So what's the path forward? A revision of the court decision is not possible.
The school, as previously mentioned, had already had revised its rules, but that doesn't help when a student repeatedly doesn't comply and his infraction isn't deemed grave enough to allow for an expulsion. Other disciplinary measures have yielded no results. News report that the student is now socially shunned in school, but not even that is deterring him. He has the court decision printed out and shows it to anyone challenging him to take the glasses off.
Austria's Ministry of Education is allegedly examining a possible general prohibition on smart glasses and similar devices in schools both due to privacy concerns and cheating in exams. I am not sure how this could weigh heavier than the school's house-wide rules, but it may give schools more of a justification in their disciplinary measures.
my opinion
The school is put in a difficult situation in which it needs to protect the rights of students and staff, yet is in no position to gather the required evidence to successfully argue for an expulsion. Schools are not allowed to check the devices of students and acquire any material, and therefore rely on students to voluntarily relay any evidence. But what student will incriminate themselves, especially when you want to keep doing what you do? It's especially frustrating here because the student himself has been caught recording with a different device before, showing he is capable of doing this. The behavior being caught on a phone and not the glasses was his saving grace.
As no (proven or otherwise) crime has occurred, it's not like there is anything warranting police to confiscate the device and search for evidence. This may be the case when another student has enough evidence to suggest that they were recorded (maybe in a sensitive space like the school toilet or a changing room) and is reporting it to the police or otherwise pressing charges, depending on case and legal options. Though I don't think this would realistically be pursued successfully by any cop....
I empathize deeply with the staff and students. They have to tolerate this now until further developments, and it's unclear what those may be and if they would help getting this creep to comply. Smartphones have already added a sense of surveillance to the school, in the sense that things could be recorded and uploaded for millions of strangers online to see and ridicule. Now, this covert recording is easier than ever and adds to the chilling effects. They also have to deal with possibly unfair advantages during exams, as the student will likely keep arguing for medical necessity because he needs glasses to see and seemingly cannot be convinced to stop the use or exchange it for normal glasses.
Especially as a woman, it frightens me. Lots of people, but especially anyone who went through puberty as a girl, can probably attest to the extreme casual sexual cruelty that teenage boys are capable of and so often employ against the girls in their class. In their position, I would be extra scared of any recordings that could amount to zooming in on their breasts and butts, or amount to upskirting, or any pictures that then later are used to nudify via AI. I have had partially nude pictures of me leaked at my school when I was 15, so I don't have to imagine - I know how it feels.
I am also mad when I think back to how dress codes and school uniforms were handled when I was still in school. It was common to have rules around cleavage, shoulders, bra straps, length of skirts and shorts, the midriff, etc. or have school clothing that complied with these standards. My school employed a dress code, and I regularly violated it. I was either sent home or stuck into a shirt that was supposed to shame me for it.
It was a confusing time. You quickly realize that these rules do not apply to boys, and that basically anything you could buy at stores for your age group and gender actually violated the dress code (especially the time when hotpants were in). I was advertised to with these non-compliant clothes; I was expected to wear them to be cool and pretty and have any worth as a woman, I was supposed to want them and buy them, yet at school we were treated as temptresses, as vulgar, unclean, pornographic, sexual. Something to be hidden away, something that doesn't deserve any expression or comfort, no matter how hot it got outside. The issue was always deemed to be us, not the male teachers or students lusting after us. It instills a sort of shame into you that is very, very hard to get rid of. Yet here we are, someone can just refuse to take off the Meta glasses, an actual real threat to people's rights and comfort, and everyone is apparently ultimately powerless to stop it! The double standards deeply irk me.
The parents are also obviously failing their son. They give him a controversial toy without ensuring the appropriate handling of it and setting some ground rules. They know their child has ADHD, yet give him a device that easily lets him be distracted during class. They know something has to change, yet all they care for is keeping their child in school, and they aren't confiscating the glasses despite their child missing school over it, threatening his education and future prospects. They seem to accept that they have helped their son become a complete social pariah in his most formative social years. What a shame.
A ruined teenhood, a risk to education, a threat to students and staff, court costs... for what? To make Mark Zuckerberg more rich and influential. It's not worth it.
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