![\""Backpacks\"](\""https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/051122-Elementary-School-MG-CM-04.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1"\")
\n\t\t\t\tA classroom in Sacramento on May 11, 2022. Lawmakers may add restrictions to curb financial awards to victims of child sexual abuse at school. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n
By John Manly, Special for CalMatters<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tA classroom in Sacramento on May 11, 2022. Lawmakers may add restrictions to curb financial awards to victims of child sexual abuse at school. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n California’s Legislature is considering revising a state law that has enabled more victims of child sexual abuse to sue public schools. This column argues against reforming the law. This accompanying column argues for it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Guest Commentary written by<\/p>\n Lobbyists for school districts, public employee unions and insurance interests are again pressuring California legislators to emasculate Assembly Bill 218, a measure legislators enacted unanimously in 2019 to close a gaping loophole in the statute of limitations<\/a> that let schools\u00a0 avoid civil liability for enabling or covering up child sexual abuse by teachers and staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n AB 218 passed as awareness grew of the psychological, cultural and economic barriers victims face, discouraging them from disclosing their abuse \u2014 often for many years \u2014 as well as the revelation of mass abuse cases still occurring. Case in point: the horrific Miramonte Elementary School case in which Los Angeles Unified School District teacher Mark Berndt posed and photographed dozens of third graders eating cookies laden with his semen, a jar of which he kept on his desk. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n Last year intense lobbying by anti-AB 218 forces resulted in two bills, which failed to advance to floor votes after an enormous backlash from survivors and victims\u2019 advocates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Senate Bill 577, authored by Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), proposed some reasonable modifications of existing law<\/a>, but the bill was hijacked. School districts, counties and Joint Powers Authority lobbyists insisted on amendments to drastically reduce survivors\u2019 access to compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n SB 832, authored by teachers\u2019 union standard bearer Sen. Ben Allen, would have gutted survivors\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n These same powerful forces are again poised to introduce draconian AB 218-related \u201creforms\u201d in the 2026 session that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for survivors to obtain full compensation.<\/p>\n What\u2019s most troubling is the intentionally opaque way AB 218-related bills are being discussed. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has reportedly assigned a group of lawmakers to \u201cexplore solutions that strike the right balance\u201d of liability for child sexual abuse. This is happening behind closed doors.<\/p>\n It comes as no surprise that proponents of anti-survivor measures would want to maintain anonymity. During the 2025 session, lawmakers complained when victims\u2019 advocates labeled them \u201cchild sexual abuse enablers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It is a fitting moniker for politicians who ignore the enormity of the child sexual abuse crisis, which is estimated to affect more than 10% of K-12 public school students<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom knew that compensating victims wouldn\u2019t be cheap, but they rightly concluded it was a necessary and moral step to take responsibility for the devastation of thousands of lives and to deter future abuse in schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n Five years later, school and insurance lobbyists are misrepresenting the fiscal impact of AB 218 while blaming child sexual abuse survivors.<\/p>\n The vast majority of school districts are fiscally sound. The state\u2019s school finance watchdog, California\u2019s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, recently found most district financial positions \u201cremained strong.\u201d Only four districts face significant fiscal distress<\/a> \u2014 a decline from prior years.<\/p>\n The biggest driver of emerging gaps in school finance is not sexual abuse claims but a steady decline in K-12 enrollment<\/a>, on which state school funding is based.<\/p>\n School districts and their insurance allies claim to support justice for abuse survivors, but their well-paid lobbyists are doing everything possible to roll back victims\u2019 rights. They refuse to accept responsibility for decades of malfeasance, during which thousands of children were abused in their care, and they seek to limit the rights of future victims.<\/p>\n At the same time teachers\u2019 unions fight against common sense reforms, such as a statewide registry of school predators and increased criminal penalties for failure of \u201cmandatory reporters\u201d to inform law enforcement of suspected abuse.<\/p>\n In 2019 the Legislature and Governor Newsom made a promise to survivors that they would have the same rights to compensation as victims whose abuse occurred in private settings<\/a>, such as in churches or the Boy Scouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Breaking that promise now would not only work a grave injustice to past and current survivors, it would also substantially reduce public schools\u2019 motivation to take more serious steps to protect children from predators.<\/p>\n This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Manly, Special for CalMatters A classroom in Sacramento on May 11, 2022. Lawmakers may add restrictions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,1843,8,964,724,1709,4730],"class_list":["post-170376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-legislature","tag-california-news","tag-commentary","tag-criminal-justice","tag-exclude-module","tag-k-12-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}