Call Now
713-521-0059
Unlike a public school district, a private school, church, camp or youth organization has no governmental immunity. It can be sued in Texas for its own negligence, under ordinary Texas law.
There is, however, a statute that caps what it pays, and understanding when that cap does and does not apply is the whole ballgame in these cases.
These are claims about what the organization did, not claims that the organization committed the abuse.
Negligent hiring and negligent recommendation. The Texas Supreme Court addressed this in Golden Spread Council, Inc. No. 562 of Boy Scouts of America v. Akins, 926 S.W.2d 287 (Tex. 1996), holding that “if [the council] knew or should have known that [the scoutmaster] was peculiarly likely to molest boys, it had a duty not to recommend him as a scoutmaster.” The duty arose from the council’s own act of recommending him combined with what it knew. The national organization, which had no prior knowledge, did not.
That case marks out the territory precisely. Liability attaches to the entity that knew something and placed the person anyway.
Negligent supervision and negligent retention. What the organization did once it received a complaint. Whether it investigated. Whether it separated the person from children. Whether it moved him somewhere else.
Premises and program safety. Two-adult rules, sleeping arrangements, transportation policies, background check practices, and whether the organization followed its own written policies.
Chapter 84 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code caps the liability of a qualifying charitable organization. Churches, religious organizations, educational organizations and youth sports organizations organized under section 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) generally qualify. One qualification worth checking early: Section 84.003 reaches a private primary or secondary school only if the school is accredited by a member association of the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. An unaccredited private school may fall outside the chapter entirely, which means outside its caps.
The caps are real. Section 84.006 limits a non-hospital charitable organization’s liability to $500,000 for each person and $1,000,000 for each single occurrence of bodily injury or death, and $100,000 for each single occurrence of property damage. Section 84.005 applies the same limits to a suit against an employee acting in the course and scope of employment. Section 84.004 goes further for unpaid volunteers, giving them immunity rather than a cap.
Now the part that decides cases. Section 84.007(a) provides:
“This chapter does not apply to an act or omission that is intentional, wilfully negligent, or done with conscious indifference or reckless disregard for the safety of others.”
The abuse itself is intentional, so the abuser is outside the Act entirely. Whether the cap protects the organization turns on whether its own conduct in hiring, supervising or retaining that person was merely negligent, which is capped, or was consciously indifferent or in reckless disregard of children’s safety, which is not.
An organization that ignored a complaint, that had been told about this particular person, that moved him rather than removed him, or that never ran the background check its own policy required, is squarely in the territory Section 84.007(a) describes. That is what these cases are built to prove, and it is why the cap should never be treated as a foregone conclusion.
There is a second exception worth knowing. Section 84.007(g) provides that the caps do not apply at all to a charitable organization that does not carry liability insurance in the specified amounts. An underinsured organization has no cap.
Section 84.0066, added in 2019, gives a charitable organization good-faith immunity for disclosing to a current or prospective employer an allegation it reasonably believes to be true that a person engaged in sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, sexual harassment or enumerated criminal offenses.
The Legislature removed the excuse. An organization that quietly let someone move on to the next church, school or camp cannot say the law prevented it from speaking.
Title IX reaches only an education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Most private K-12 schools, churches and camps receive none, which puts them outside it. Most private universities do receive it, which puts them inside. Whether a particular institution takes federal money is a factual question worth checking rather than assuming.
For conduct against a child violating the offenses listed in Section 16.0045(a) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, including sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse and indecency with a child, Texas gives thirty years from accrual.
That is the long deadline, and it applies to these state-law claims. It does not apply to federal claims, which borrow the two-year period. Where a case involves both, the two deadlines run at different speeds.
Every statute and case linked above was read at its primary source. Texas statutes change every legislative session and case law is constantly changing.
This page is general information about Texas law. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Personnel and volunteer files. Background check records and who ran them. Prior complaints and the written response to each. Internal correspondence about the person. Records of a transfer or a resignation and how it was characterized. Insurance files. Policy manuals, and evidence about whether the policies were followed.
Institutions keep records, and thirty years is not long enough for all of them to disappear.
Schiffer Law Firm represents survivors in civil claims against churches, camps, private schools and youth organizations, in Houston and across Texas.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Call 713-521-0059.
This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
No. Section 84.007(a) provides that the chapter does not apply to an act or omission that is intentional, wilfully negligent, or done with conscious indifference or reckless disregard for the safety of others.
Section 84.006 limits a non-hospital charitable organization to $500,000 for each person, $1,000,000 for each single occurrence of bodily injury or death, and $100,000 for each single occurrence of property damage.
No. Section 84.003 reaches a private primary or secondary school only if it is accredited by a member association of the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission.
Usually not, unless it receives federal financial assistance. The claims here are ordinarily state law claims about what the organization knew and did.