Billions at stake as justices revisit school abuse liability

Reeling from liability for billions of dollars in court judgments over retroactive childhood sexual abuse claims, California school districts got more bad news in July when a state appellate panel refused to shield a district for a teacher's off-campus sexual assault of a student.

The ruling broadened the scope of available claims--despite an Education Code provision providing schools immunity for student injuries away from the school grounds--because school officials on campus may have been negligent in allowing the teacher to take his victim to his home.

Late last month, the state Supreme Court agreed to review that decision, leaving districts to hope for a reversal that would bar a further threat to their finances. Victor Valley Union High School District v. S.C. (Magistrale), S298193 (Ca. S. Ct., rev. gtd. Sept. 23, 2026).

The high court stepped in after lower appellate courts differed on how the Education Code's shield provision, Section 44808, applies to off-campus incidents.

"This split is ripe for review and one of enormous statewide importance," lawyers for the school district at Horvitz & Levy LLP wrote in petitioning the high court to look at the issue. "Section 44808 applies to all 1,000-plus public school districts in California. Under the decision below, the statutory immunity will rarely provide meaningful protection--because artful pleading can always trace off-campus harm to some allegedly negligent act on campus.

"That interpretation eviscerates the immunity the Legislature enacted to shield districts from liability for injuries students suffer traveling to and from school and in other off-campus situations."

But lawyers at Andrews & Higgins, representing sexual abuse survivor Victoria Magistrale, contended that conflicting appellate opinions over the reach of Section 44808 "arose from materially different settings, including travel on public streets, independent camps, private childcare, and suicides during school breaks."

That matters, Magistrale's lawyers argued in opposing review, because the conflict is over the statute's scope, not its intent. The Court of Appeal, in ruling that school officials may have been negligent in Magistrale's case, "simply refuses to extend Section 44808 beyond its terms by converting it into blanket immunity for every claim in which the ultimate injury occurs off campus."

Earlier in the case, in opposing summary judgment for the defense, Magistrale's lawyers wrote, "The District's Motion is based on an offensive and misleading attempt to expand the scope of immunity ... to absolve itself of inexcusable negligence resulting in Plaintiff suffering abhorrent childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a District employee."

The Supreme Court's unanimous vote to grant review and potentially strengthen school districts' immunity for student injuries off campus came amid the severe financial strain caused by thousands of successful claims after lawmakers extended the statute of limitations to allow a new reckoning over old abuse cases.

Just days before the grant of review, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed new legislation offering districts another avenue of relief: limits on some childhood sexual abuse claims.

SB 577 raises the burden of proof for some claims, eliminates treble damages and limits liability exposure. It includes safeguards to deter fraudulent claims.

The dilemma for courts is in the tension between finding justice for survivors who were sexually abused when they were vulnerable children and the financial viability of institutions in charge of educating them and keeping them safe.

The new Supreme Court case fits into Newsom's rationale for the new legislation: "to thread the needle of protecting and compensating children from vile and inhumane treatment, while simultaneously ensuring our most important public institutions do not crumble under the threat of oppressive, and in some cases outright fraudulent claims of abuse."

In the Victor Valley case, there's not much doubt that plaintiff Magistrale was a victim. When she was 15 at Silverado High School in 1999, her teacher and ROTC instructor Mark Anthony Lizama offered to drive her to meet her parents off campus.

She agreed. "While leaving campus, Teacher and Student walked 'out through the office, said goodbye to the office lady,' and went to the parking lot," the appellate panel recounted. Then Lizama took her to his home and gave her alcohol, and a sexual encounter took place. Two other sexual encounters, at his home and in a rural part of San Bernardino County, occurred over the following months.

Magistrale eventually told her stepfather about the incidents. The police were called, Lizama was charged, tried and convicted of having sex and oral copulation with a minor and sentenced to prison.

Decades later, in 2019, Sacramento lawmakers passed the Child Victims Act, AB 218, that opened a three-year lookback window allowing adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue over previously time-barred claims. In November 2022, Magistrale sued the school district for negligence. A trial judge allowed the suit to go forward.

Thousands of similar suits led to the crushing liability that now plagues school districts. Last year, petitioning the courts and the Legislature for relief, districts painted a dire picture. "It is not an exaggeration to call the stakes existential for the County," Los Angeles officials wrote to the high court, pleading that it find AB 218 unconstitutional.

More than 7,000 plaintiffs had filed suit in L.A. alone. "If all these cases were to proceed to verdict, the estimated liability could be in the tens of billions of dollars and bankrupt the County," said the filing, which supported a neighboring jurisdiction's suit. The justices declined to get involved. County of Ventura v. Superior Court (D.A.), S289121 (Cal. S. Ct., pet. denied March 12, 2025).

A month later, L.A. County settled its suits for nearly $5 billion. Payouts have been delayed to roughly half the victims amid audit and fraud investigations. Around the state large verdicts and settlements have strained school district budgets as insurance premiums have soared, causing cutbacks. Student learning has suffered, studies have shown.

So Magistrale's case--successful at the trial court and intermediate appellate level--raises concerns that even off-campus misbehavior by school personnel could cost districts more money.

Magistrale and Lizama's walk through campus and their encounter with the "office lady" was enough for the appellate panel to reject summary judgment for the district and find a triable issue.

"For example, a jury could infer and conclude that [Teacher's] ability to walk through the school with [Student] after a school-sanctioned [ROTC] activity, encounter at least one other school employee, then leave campus with [Student] in his own vehicle, might be an example of District's negligent supervision..." wrote Acting Presiding Justice Douglas P. Miller for a unanimous panel.

He and his colleagues cited the California Supreme Court's opinion in Hoyem v. Manhattan Beach City School District (1978), 22 Cal.3d 508, which held, "no California decision suggests that when a school district fails to properly supervise a student on school premises, the district can automatically escape liability simply because the student's ultimate injury occurs off school property."

Two more recent 4th DCA opinions contradicted Hoyem. "Regrettably, we believe the court erred in [those opinions'] discussion of the law," Miller wrote. "We presented the law as though the location of the injury is the relevant issue, which is incorrect."

Added Justice Michael J. Raphael in a concurrence, "Under both the statute and Hoyem, the relevant question is not where the injury occurred but whether the district was negligent."

He went on, "Under the district's view, if a district knows that a teacher or coach may be sexually assaulting a student, its liability turns on where the assault occurs. If the assault occurs in a classroom or the school's athletic field, the school is liable, but if the assault happens at the teacher's home after hours, the district is not liable. As Hoyem recognized, though, the defendant's emphasis on the situs of the injury is totally misplaced." Victor Valley Union High School District v. Superior Court (Magistrale), E086569 (4th DCA, op. filed July 13, 2026).

That left Horvitz partner Robert H. Wright to persuade the Supreme Court to reject or sidestep the Hoyem opinion. In the petition for review, Wright pointed out that Hoyem involved a 10-year-old student who left campus without authorization during school hours and was injured when struck by a motorcycle. Most cases since have read the opinion narrowly, meaning immunity applies only when the student should have been under the school's supervision.

"The overwhelming weight of appellate authority reads Hoyem as limited to its facts," Wright wrote, including the fact that the student left without authorization during school hours. A minority found a fundamentally different approach: "Rather than address the location of the injury, the court addressed the location of the negligent act of the public employee."

But that's wrong, Wright wrote. The statute's "reasonable care" clause applies only "where a district has voluntarily extended its activities beyond campus with an expectation that it will protect students."

Wright has a winning track record in defending school districts from claims related to off-campus incidents. Last year he prevailed for a Northern California district accused of negligence after an 11-year-old student committed suicide at her father's home during winter break.

A 1st District Court of Appeal panel reversed a trial judge and found the school district immune from liability for an act that occurred when the student was not under the immediate and direct supervision of district employees. Vallejo City Unified School Dist. v. Superior Court (2025) 118 Cal.App.5th 139.

For its part, the Andrews & Higgins firm, led by partners Anne Andrews and Sean T. Higgins, has long represented victims of sexual abuse, particularly in cases within the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

In Magistrale's case, there is evidence that school officials were negligent, Andrews & Higgins partner Ryan M. McIntosh wrote, because Lizama "openly escorted Magistrale from ROTC practice through the front office and past District personnel and into his personal vehicle."