Latino students are California’s present and future, now making up the majority of our public classrooms. Recognizing this reality, our state has invested in programs like bilingual education and English learner support — serving nearly 1 in 5 California students who require English language assistance, the majority of whom are Latino — to ensure students have the tools they need to succeed. But that progress is increasingly at risk.
I see this reality every day in my role as board president of my local school district, where I live, and in my position as State Director of the California League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). As a parent and a school board member, I understand the responsibility that comes with protecting every public dollar entrusted to us and ensuring those dollars directly benefit today’s students. That responsibility is becoming harder to meet.
Across California, school districts are facing mounting budget pressures driven by rising insurance costs and legal liabilities. Across the Central Coast and throughout California, districts are facing growing legal and insurance costs that are already straining school budgets. At the center of this strain are the unintended consequences of Assembly Bill 218, the 2019 law that lifted the statute of limitations on civil claims related to childhood sexual abuse and opened the door to lawsuits against employers.
While survivors have always had pathways to come forward, and that right should remain protected, AB 218 created open-ended liability without setting aside any funding to pay for claims. As a result, California public schools are now being required to pay for decades-old cases — some dating back to the 1940s — using today’s classroom dollars.
When many of these cases occurred decades ago, Latino students were a small minority in California’s public schools. Today, they are the majority. Yet Latino families — absent from those classrooms at the time — are now footing the bill through higher costs and diminished school resources for liabilities rooted in a different era. California’s future is being asked to pay for its past.
AB 218 was a well-intended step towards providing survivors with restitution. However, the way this law is being implemented today is to create a new injustice. Critical resources are being diverted away from all of today’s students, not just Latino, who had nothing to do with the abuses that occurred decades ago, yet are now being asked to pay for them.
Even districts with no abuse cases are feeling the impact. Schools are being hit with ballooning litigation costs, expensive investigations into decades-old insurance policies, additional staff time devoted to legal compliance, unexpected bills to pay an insurance risk pool covering settlements for decades-old claims, and rapidly escalating demands.
These aren’t abstract budget line items — they show up in delayed playgrounds, leaking roofs, larger classes and postponed raises for teachers and staff. In communities where schools are the primary safety net, the impact extends well beyond the classroom.
Beyond schools, this liability crisis is also hitting counties and local governments hard. Public agencies across California are warning that open-ended financial exposure from decades-old claims could force today’s taxpayers to shoulder costs that threaten essential public services.
What makes this crisis even more troubling is where much of this money is going. In many cases, taxpayer-funded settlements result in plaintiffs’ attorneys receiving as much as 40-50% of the payout, while schools, cities and counties absorb the long-term financial damage.
Sacramento must act, and act meaningfully. Meaningful reform must include reasonable limits on non-economic damages while allowing higher awards in cases with more evidence. It should also require early case screening through a certificate of merit to help identify valid claims and reduce costly litigation over weak or unsupported cases. Reform must also close the loophole that forces public entities to pay the full cost of a settlement even when they are found only partially at fault, ensuring they pay only their fair share, not what others are responsible for. And to protect taxpayer dollars, reforms should allow recovery of legal fees in cases where fraud is proven, creating real consequences for bad-faith filings.
The Legislature has a responsibility to pursue balanced reforms that preserve access to justice without creating unlimited financial burdens that ultimately fall on today’s communities, students, and families, and the essential services they rely on.
Anything less is further injustice.
Jacob Sandoval is the League of United Latin American Citizens California State Director and Santa Rita Union School District Board President.
