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A local parent is suing the Palo Alto Unified School District, alleging that a high school English teacher falsely accused his son of using artificial intelligence to write an essay and required the student to retake the assignment in-person, resulting in a lower class grade.
Parent Takashi Kato believes his son was discriminated against as a multilingual Asian male and is demanding the school reverse the student’s grade, according to a lawsuit filed last week in the North District of the U.S. District Court. Kato claims school staff wrongly penalized his student and did not follow a formal grading procedure. He hopes to put an end to the in-person retake practice through his federal lawsuit.
In a district that aims to embrace advancement, administrators have attended AI workshops to learn about new ways to use the technology. But so far, district leaders have not created an overarching policy, leaving teachers to fight AI use on their own. For that reason, the lawsuit falls into a gray area of academic procedure.
Kato’s son, who is a sophomore at Palo Alto High School, turned in his essay about “The Crucible,” an Arthur Miller play about Salem witch trials, on October 30, 2025. Two weeks later, he submitted the essay on Turnitin, a software the district uses for AI detection in student submissions.
The student’s teacher, Sarah Bartlett, said Turnitin flagged 76% of the essay as AI generated or influenced, according to the suit. She also noted that the student admitted to using Grammarly for synonym searches, which Kato claimed was false. Bartlett’s policy, which is described as non-punitive, allows students to retake the assignment in class, according to the lawsuit.
The student received a D on the rewrite, dropping his final grade to a C, according to the suit. Kato claims the procedure was punitive, did not follow a formal academic policy and that the grading process was arbitrary.
In response, Kato submitted nearly 1,200 pages of evidence, including drafts, notes and direct access to the document’s revision history to refute the AI claim, according to the lawsuit. After some back-and-forth, the family gave school staff a deadline: give the student a “neutral” B grade by March 6.
School leaders did not give in.
The family alleges Turnitin’s AI-writing service is not reliable and that they were not given a reasonable chance to refute the cheating claims.
“The Turnitin tool’s output was treated as dispositive without educator-driven evaluation or a meaningful opportunity for the student to respond before sanctions were imposed,” the lawsuit reads.
Kato says this has happened to other students, one of whom was also Asian, and that teachers have retaliated against his son after the complaint was lodged.
“Academic studies and university policies have questioned the reliability of AI detectors and identified bias against non-native English writers,” the lawsuit reads.
Many prestigious universities have turned off the tool due to its fairness concerns, according to the lawsuit.
To combat these findings, Kato wants his student’s grade returned to a B, the allegation wiped from his record, an in-depth grading evaluation for the retake essay and for the district to vacate the in-person retake practice. The lawsuit alleges multiple counts of discrimination, retaliation, lack of due process and improper grading policies.
Kato believes this experience could negatively impact his son’s college admission.
“The family incurred emotional and process harm from burden-shifting, delay, minimization of chronology, and reliance on the unproven Grammarly assertion,” the lawsuit reads.
The school district has not yet filed a response to the complaint and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A case management conference is scheduled for Aug. 6, according to court documents.
