ORINDA — Staring down millions of dollars in liability claims involving teachers accused of sexual abuse, school districts across California fear that a change in state law that revived hundreds of old cases could push them into bankruptcy.
Now winding its way through the courts is a Contra Costa County case that argues that lawmakers violated the state’s Constitution with Assembly Bill 218, which opened a three-year window in 2019 for survivors of childhood abuse to sue school districts and other public agencies. That opening revived hundreds of cases that otherwise had expired more than a decade earlier, a move victim advocates have applauded.
The bill allowed three former students of Miramonte High in Orinda to file a 2022 complaint in Superior Count accusing a former English teacher of grooming and sexually assaulting them nearly two decades earlier. They are seeking to hold Acalanes Union High School District officials responsible for negligence in hiring and supervising the teacher, which they say contributed to the abuse and violated their civil rights.
The Superior Court case was paused while the 1st District Court of Appeal considered the arguments. It recently delivered a stinging rebuff.
The appellate court “unequivocally rejected” the district’s contention that the new rules illegally stripped it of its immunity. The judges found that Assembly Bill 218, which modified the statute of limitations and other reporting requirements for child sexual assault lawsuits, did not force the district to take new responsibility for past sexual assaults. It said the district had been “indisputably substantively liable” for the allegations when they occurred, stretching from 2007 to 2009.
Jessica Dayton, the attorney for the women suing the Acalanes district, said the appellate opinion mirrors a growing public sentiment regarding cases of child sexual assault: that the societal benefit of holding perpetrators accountable outweighs the financial impact on public institutions.
“They created the harm by employing child molesters,” Dayton said in an interview. “So I can’t say that I know what the solution is, but I can say it should not come at the expense of our survivors.”
Legal counsel for the school district and other California public agencies have argued that any impending payouts to abuse survivors wouldn’t serve a public purpose. The district’s attorneys instead pleaded in July that the bill had actually done more harm, with $100 million of public money already awarded to individuals who endured sexual abuse while in or around the classroom, according to public records.
That stance is fueled by fear that the swell of lawsuits from the bill will financially burden or even bankrupt some districts due to insurance costs. It’s still too soon to quantify the monetary damages tied to AB 218, as many civil lawsuits are still pending, and others that may have settled are not reported in any central database. Those awards may collectively exceed $2 billion to $3 billion, according to a January report by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an independent state agency formed to help California’s educational institutions stay solvent.
It’s still unclear how many hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints have been filed against California school districts in the wake of AB 218. In all, 51 schools in the Bay Area were named in complaints filed within the last six months of 2022 — the final deadline victims were given to revive claims of childhood abuse under the law — according to a San Francisco Chronicle report in January 2024.
The fiscal crisis team report said AB 218 cases have decreased school insurers’ willingness to accept risk “given the ongoing uncertainty surrounding childhood sexual assault losses, which includes unknowns that could extend for decades.”
This case comes as Acalanes Union prepares to ask voters to approve Measure T, a controversial $130 million parcel tax that would generate about $4.5 million annually for the district — funding that administrators claim is vital to keep up with rising costs for student services and backfill stagnant local revenues.
Dayton said the Superior Court’s prior June 2023 finding — that the revived sexual assault cases violated California’s gift clause and did not serve a public purpose “even if a moral or equitable obligation exists” — was one of only a handful of cases that she can recall where the court sided, even briefly, with a public agency’s challenge of AB 218.
The 1st District appellate court, however, ruled that financial hardship of a public agency isn’t an excuse to overrule the law.
“Courts do not sit as super-legislatures to determine the wisdom, desirability or propriety of statutes enacted by the Legislature,” Presiding Justice Teri L. Jackson wrote on Feb. 24.
The February opinion tossed the entire fight back to the Superior Court. Unless the parties agree to settle, a trial date will be set in September.
Acalanes district officials, including Superintendent John Nickerson, did not respond to requests for comment on the suit. When contacted for this story, Sonia Mehta, an attorney during the Superior Court case, said she no longer represented the former Miramonte High English teacher.
If the parties fail to reach an agreement, the case will move forward with a jury trial — an outcome that could potentially cost district officials millions in damages.
“That’s because people are recognizing how absolutely disgusting this behavior is,” Dayton said, “and how children have been failed by the system and the school districts that were supposed to be protecting them.”