California Lawmakers Are Weighing Whether to Scale Back the Law That Reopened Old Abuse Claims

Reviewed by Survivor Rights Center · Updated 2026-07-18

What AB 218 Currently Does

Assembly Bill 218 passed the California Legislature unanimously in 2019 and took effect on January 1, 2020. It eliminated the state's civil statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims going forward, letting survivors sue until their 40th birthday or within five years of discovering a connection between an injury and past abuse, whichever comes later. The law also opened a temporary three-year window allowing survivors whose claims had already expired under the old rules to file suit anyway.

That lookback window, combined with the permanently longer deadline, produced a wave of lawsuits against school districts, counties, churches, and other institutions accused of enabling abuse by staff or volunteers decades ago. Many of those cases have already settled, including some of the largest institutional abuse payouts in the state's history.

Why Some Lawmakers Want to Change It

The scale of the resulting litigation has become a major fiscal concern for local government. County officials told an Assembly budget subcommittee that Los Angeles County alone faces roughly four billion dollars in estimated settlement costs tied to AB 218 claims, while school districts statewide have reported a combined two to three billion dollars in liability exposure. Local leaders have described the numbers as a genuine threat to public agencies' ability to fund other services.

In response, Assembly leadership has assigned a group of lawmakers to, in the leadership's own words, explore solutions that strike the right balance on the issue. Those discussions have largely happened outside public hearings, which is part of why survivor advocates say they are watching the process closely rather than waiting for a bill to formally appear.

What the Proposed Changes Would Actually Do

The specific shape of any reform is still forming, but the proposals that have surfaced fall into a few clear categories. County and school groups have pressed for limits on what public agencies ultimately pay, including caps on damages and a state-funded compensation program that would steer survivors toward a fund rather than direct lawsuits. Separately, a Senate measure sought to raise the burden of proof for the oldest revived claims, requiring survivors to support an abuse allegation with clear and convincing corroborating evidence beyond their own testimony rather than meeting the ordinary civil standard.

That evidentiary proposal, carried in Senate Bill 832, was not taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee and effectively stalled, though advocates say some of its elements are expected to resurface as amendments to a related measure, Senate Bill 577, which would also restrict survivors from refiling certain claims that had previously been dismissed. Supporters frame these changes as ways to keep the law financially sustainable for public agencies; critics say each one would make it substantially harder for older claims, which are common in abuse litigation, to succeed at all.

What Survivor Advocates Are Saying

Advocates who fought for AB 218's passage argue that changes like a damages cap or a heightened evidentiary standard would undo the practical effect of the law without repealing it outright, since survivors could technically still sue while facing far steeper odds of collecting meaningful compensation. They note that child sexual abuse is estimated to affect a significant share of K-12 public school students, framing the fight as one over whether that population retains a realistic path to accountability.

Similar reform proposals introduced in the prior legislative session drew significant public opposition from survivor groups before stalling, and advocates say they expect the same response if the current working group's discussions turn into an actual bill. For now, AB 218's existing deadlines remain unchanged, and survivors considering a claim should confirm current filing rules with a California attorney rather than assume any proposed change has taken effect.

What a 'Reform' to a Survivor-Rights Law Can Actually Mean

When a state considers scaling back a law that expanded survivors' access to court, the changes rarely repeal the law outright. Instead they tend to take one of these forms.

1. Damage caps: Limiting non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, to a multiple of a survivor's provable economic losses can sharply reduce total compensation even when liability is clear.
2. Higher evidentiary standards: Requiring clear and convincing evidence, rather than the ordinary civil standard, makes it harder to win older claims where records and witnesses are harder to find.
3. Actual-knowledge requirements: Shifting the legal question from whether an institution should have known about abuse to whether it actually knew narrows who can be held liable.
4. Shortened lookback windows: Some proposals close a revival window earlier than originally planned, cutting off survivors who have not yet filed.
5. Procedural hurdles: Added certification, expert-review, or pre-filing requirements can slow down or discourage claims without changing the underlying deadline.
6. Sunset and review clauses: Building in a future date to revisit a law, as some proposals do, keeps the door open for further changes down the road.

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