California lawmakers have sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a long-negotiated bill that aims to ease the financial strain on schools and local governments facing a wave of child sex abuse lawsuits, though it stops short of the sweeping protections those agencies had been pushing for.
Senate Bill 577, authored by Sen. John Laird, cleared both houses of the Legislature over the weekend after roughly two years of back-and-forth negotiations. The Assembly approved it 46-19, and the Senate followed with a 24-10 vote sending it to the governor’s desk. Newsom now has until Sept. 30 to decide whether to sign it into law.
The bill emerges from the fallout of a 2020 state law that eliminated the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims, opening the door to a flood of lawsuits against public schools, cities and counties. Many of those institutions now face potentially devastating payouts, and they had hoped the Legislature would step in with caps on damages to limit their exposure. That request went nowhere — survivor advocates argued that putting a dollar limit on abuse claims was fundamentally unjust, and lawmakers ultimately sided with them.
Instead, the compromise legislation gives public entities a different kind of protection: a tougher evidentiary bar for older claims. Survivors over the age of 40, along with those pursuing cases that predate the 2024 statute-of-limitations change and involve destroyed records, will now need to meet a “clear and convincing evidence” standard and demonstrate that the institution had “actual knowledge” of the abuse at the time it occurred.
The bill also builds in a series of prevention requirements. Counties, cities and school districts will be required to submit codes of conduct and sexual abuse prevention plans to the California Attorney General’s Office by Jan. 1, 2028. The Attorney General would then report back to the Legislature on which agencies fail to meet that deadline.
To discourage frivolous or fraudulent claims, the measure imposes a $25,000 fine on attorneys found to have filed child sexual abuse lawsuits in bad faith.
Speaking on the Senate floor before the vote, Laird described the bill as a measured step forward that reflects competing interests rather than a clean win for either side.
“It is an indicator that we have strived to maintain balance,” he said.
Chantel Johnson, a spokesperson for the Youth Law Center, which advocates for abuse survivors, called the final version “a hard-won compromise” that balances the financial concerns of public agencies against survivors’ right to pursue justice. She acknowledged it wasn’t the bill her organization would have written from scratch, but praised lawmakers for rejecting damage caps and for including meaningful prevention and oversight measures.
Not everyone was satisfied. A bipartisan group of lawmakers voiced concern that the higher evidence standard will make it significantly harder for older survivors — many of whom took years or even decades to come forward — to hold institutions accountable. Law enforcement groups separately raised objections to provisions altering how personnel records are accessed during these cases.
Caroline Heldman, co-founder of the advocacy group Stand With Survivors, was blunt in her criticism. “It’s a bill that is bad for survivors, plain and simple,” she said, arguing that the new evidentiary threshold sets an “impossible standard” for people who, for a range of deeply personal reasons, don’t come forward until later in life.
For now, the bill’s fate rests with Newsom, whose decision will shape how California balances the competing pressures of protecting survivors and shielding public institutions from what many local officials describe as an existential financial threat.
Original source: CalMatters
