According to Balderas, Google gathers location data, browsing and search histories, contacts, voice recordings, passwords and more, from children of all ages, without giving parents the ability to limit or review the data collection. The lawsuit also claims that until 2014, Google fed this data to its advertising business and that Google monitors teachers in a similar manner. Google has not yet responded to a request for comment.

While Google collects this type of data on many of its users, violating child privacy laws, at the state or federal level, could be a serious offense. Outside of the Google Education program, the lawsuit points out, Google forbids anyone in the US under the age of 13 from having their own Google account. The Google Education program provides a kind of loophole, but it must abide by the same laws.

“Tracking student data without parental consent is not only illegal, it is dangerous; and my office will hold any company accountable who compromises the safety of New Mexican children,” Balderas said in a press release.

Google says these claims are “factually wrong.”

“G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary,” a company spokesperson told Engadget. “We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads.”

This isn’t the first time Balderas has sued Google over alleged child privacy violations. In 2018, he accused Google and other companies of violating COPPA. That lawsuit, which is ongoing, is separate from the one filed Thursday. Balderas is also part of a larger antitrust probe into Google, and he has asked other companies, like BitTorrent, what they do to prevent child exploitation.

Update 4:09PM ET: A Google spokesperson provided the following statement to Engadget. We have updated this post accordingly.

These claims are factually wrong. G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary. We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads. School districts can decide how best to use Google for Education in their classrooms and we are committed to partnering with them.

The company says its originality reports will scan student work for matching text against web pages as well as “tens of millions” of books. “We’ve heard from instructors that they copy and paste passages into Google Search to check if student work is authentic, which can be repetitive, inefficient and biased. They also often spend a lot of time giving feedback about missed citations and improper paraphrasing. By integrating the power of Search into our assignment and grading tools, we can make this quicker and easier,” wrote Brian Hendricks, a Product Manager for G Suite for Education, in a press release.

Luckily for students, the new software isn’t solely for the teacher’s benefits. Students can run up to three originality reports on their own before they submit their assignments. This gives kids a chance to remove any instances of plagiarism they didn’t catch in earlier drafts of their writing. Teachers will receive their own originality report after students submit that will also flag uncited text, as well as any paragraphs with high similarity to other texts.

Given that an entire generation of students learned to rely on the search engine in lieu of developing traditional research skills, one can’t ignore the irony in this latest Google venture. Google joins a wide field of online plagiarism tools, many of which use the Google API to search the web for similar text. Both TurnitIn and Grammarly also crawl online databases of academic papers. TurnitIn also compares papers against a massive database of papers already submitted by other students. Google’s foray into the anti-plagiarism space makes sense, especially as it continues to develop tools for educators. Teachers can sign-up for the beta version of Assignments, which will go live later this fall on G Suite for Education.

Perhaps more interesting for teachers is that apps come alongside something called “idea sparks,” which are essentially editorial pieces of content written by people in education that give examples of lessons to use the app in the classroom. The Hub also has a host of filters for searching for trending topics, subjects that teachers or students may be looking to emphasis or apps appropriate for different age ranges. Google says that both the featured apps on the App Hub and idea sparks will be updated on a quarterly basis going forward.

The Google Education team has a number of other improvements they’re rolling out to the Classroom product in advance of the next school year, as well. Last year, Google rolled out a beta of Gradebook, a master place for teachers to keep track of a class’s assignments and grades. That’s ready to come out of beta now, but Google’s making a big change: it can now hook into the school information system (SIS) of choice, something that’ll keep teachers from having to enter grades both into Gradebook as well as the SIS. Obviously, if Google wants this tool to take off, teachers can’t be expected to waste time entering grades twice.

Another new tools educators have to look forward to is custom grading rubrics (or scoring guide) that can be included with each assignment so that students know exactly how the assignment is being graded. And while teachers are grading, they can now create a “comment bank” of feedback that they give often so they don’t have to type out “misspelling” over and over again.

Finally, a “locked mode” that teachers can enable on Chromebooks manged by a school is coming out of beta. That’s a quick way for a teacher to keep students from using their Chromebooks in ways they shouldn’t be (like looking up answers or chatting with classmates) while taking a test, for example. None of these are radical changes, but as Google Classroom continues to mature (it’s now used by 40 million teachers and students), this kind of polish is important if Google wants to keep its education customers happy.