Hagens Berman filed a class-action lawsuit against the Maricopa County Community Colleges District (MCCCD) after a 2013 data hack exposed the personal identity information of about 2.4 million students, graduates, employees and vendors associated with the community colleges.
The suit's named plaintiff, Jason Liebich, claimed the FBI warned the MCCCD in January 2011 that a number of its databases had been breached and made available for sale on the Internet. According to the lawsuit, MCCCD waited seven months to inform those affected that its databases had been breached and that stolen information had been made available for sale on the Internet.
The complaint accused MCCCD of "falsely advising class members that no data breach had occurred, including current students who were never informed (in writing or otherwise) that a data incursion had occurred." The district failed to make any changes to secure the databases, resulting in the breach of 14 databases on MCCCD servers in April 2013, according to the complaint.
The district operates 10 community colleges and two skill centers in Maricopa County that employ more than 9,500 people and serve 265,000 students.
