Local governments and school districts have faced higher insurance premiums and a wave of new litigation for claims of sexual abuse dating back years.
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In 2019, California passed a law that gave victims of child sexual abuse more time to sue their alleged abusers and the employers who hired them. Now, seven years later, that law has created a financial crisis for local governments and school districts facing a wave of new claims.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, is borrowing $250 million to help pay mounting claims that could exceed $1 billion in settlements. Los Angeles County, facing 5,000 new claims — some of which it believes are fraudulent — has one supervisor calling on lawmakers to overhaul Assembly Bill 218, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. County officials estimate that $5 billion in government funds intended for local services has already gone to settlements.
An attempt to revise AB 218 failed in Sacramento last year, a sign of trial attorneys’ influence at the Capitol. Meanwhile, a burgeoning cottage industry has emerged within California’s legal field, producing claim after claim of child abuse, with no end in sight.
Before AB 218, a victim had until age 26 to sue. The law extended that window to as late as age 40.
Normally, when the Legislature mandates new responsibilities for local governments, it must provide funding to implement them. Unfunded mandates typically die because the sponsoring lawmaker cannot identify a funding source.
However, lawmakers circumvented this requirement because expanding the ability to file these lawsuits didn’t come with a precise cost. Only now are the fiscal consequences becoming clear.
Many of these claims are undoubtedly valid, but lawmakers must now decide whether it makes sense, as a matter of public policy, for governments to redirect so much money to settle cases involving their employees’ alleged wrongdoing.
This legislation was not pushed through by a coalition of liberal Democrats. The expansion of child abuse litigation had bipartisan support and passed without a single Republican vote in the final votes in both chambers.
Still, the Legislature has created a genuine financial crisis for schools and local governments across California. Few lawmakers seem eager to confront it.
Lorena Gonzalez, the former Assemblymember who authored AB 218 and now leads the California Federation of Labor, told the Insurance Journal that local governments have become unintended victims of her bill.
“There’s a problem with people looking at cities and counties and school districts as deep pockets, and I think trial attorneys are taking advantage of that; they’re making far too much off taxpayer dollars,” she said.
It’s not just governments whose finances are strained. In the past two years, five of California’s 12 Roman Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy because of the surge in claims triggered by AB 218.
Democrats who control the Legislature have so far been reluctant to address the crisis, even while emphasizing their commitment to affordability statewide.
Last year, Senate Bill 577 by Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, sought to limit lawsuits against governments to cases involving “gross negligence.” The bill was placed on the inactive file at the request of Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters.
The law allows victims to file claims within five years of recalling the abuse, up to age 40. That means this may not be a single wave of cases—it could be just the beginning.
Laird’s proposal aimed in the right direction before it was effectively killed in the Assembly. If governments are to be held accountable for employees’ actions, those actions should have to meet a high standard of negligence. AB 218 also allows victims to seek up to triple damages, raising questions about reasonable limits on taxpayer-funded payouts.
AB 218 was passed with good intentions but, in hindsight, with little attention to safeguards against excessive claims. If California wants its schools and local governments to focus on their primary missions, lawmakers need to revisit AB 218 to ensure taxpayer money can be spent accordingly.
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Tom Philp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist who returned to The Sacramento Bee in 2023 after working in government for 16 years. Philp had previously written for The Bee from 1991 to 2007. He is a native Californian and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.