Facing a mountain of lawsuits, California K-12 schools will soon have a system in place to prevent teachers and other staff from sexually abusing students.
A new California law creates an array of measures to educate school staff, beef up reporting requirements and stop teachers credibly accused of abuse from getting jobs at other districts.
The law, Senate Bill 848, goes into effect Jan. 1 and schools must have protocols in place by July. The law applies to all schools, including private schools.
“I’m proud to see this bill move forward. It’s been really personal for me,” state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), the bill’s author, said after it passed. “For survivors, this is an important step toward justice.”
Avalanche of lawsuits
The law stems from a previous California law that made it easier for victims to sue school districts and counties. Under Assembly Bill 218, which went into effect in 2020, victims can file suit until age 40 or even older if they didn’t remember being abused until later in life. That has led to an avalanche of lawsuits and much greater public awareness of the scope of the problem.
So far, victims have filed more than a thousand lawsuits against school districts and counties, with some resulting in enormous payouts. A jury in Riverside County in 2023 handed Moreno Valley Unified a $135-million verdict over abuse allegations, and Los Angeles Unified faces more than $500 million in claims.
Overall, California schools face nearly $3 billion in sex abuse claims from former students, according to the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state agency that helps school districts with financial matters. Some of the incidents occurred decades ago, as early as the 1940s, and some of the payouts have been so large that they’ve led districts to financial insolvency.
School accountability
While the new law doesn’t address the lawsuits, it does institute measures intended to stop future abuse and hold schools more accountable. It requires schools to write comprehensive policies on appropriate behavior, and train students, teachers, coaches and other school staff on recognizing and reporting misconduct. It also broadens the number of staff who are required to report abuse allegations.
Perhaps the most noteworthy requirement is creating a database of teachers credibly accused of abuse. The database, to be administered by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, will be available to schools during their hiring processes. The aim is to stop teachers who have abused students from quitting and getting rehired elsewhere, only to abuse more students. Teachers who have been cleared of wrongdoing will be removed from the database.
Pérez said she was inspired to author the new law after reading about generations of abuse at Rosemead High School, which is in her district. She also told CalMatters that she was the victim of a teacher’s unwanted attention when she was in high school.
“There are now dollars and cents being assigned to these cases,” she said in September. “It’s really opened up this conversation about what can we do to better prevent this abuse from happening.”
Jones writes for CalMatters.
