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Texas law on this changed on 1 September 2025. Some of what is written about it online is drawn from the bill as originally filed rather than as enacted, and the two differ on the point that decides cases.
For most of the last three decades, a Texas family whose child was sexually abused by a school employee could not sue the school district in state court. The Tort Claims Act does not apply to school districts except as to motor vehicles, and it separately bars claims arising out of assault or any other intentional tort. Families were left with federal claims and a two-year deadline.
The 89th Legislature changed that. This page explains both the new law and the older framework, because which one applies to a family depends entirely on when the abuse happened.
House Bill 4623 created Chapter 118 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, effective 1 September 2025.
Under Section 118.002, a public school is liable when it is grossly negligent or reckless, or engages in intentional misconduct, in hiring, supervising or employing a professional school employee, and that employee commits sexual misconduct against an enrolled student or fails to report suspected child abuse under Section 261.101 of the Family Code.
Four things about it matter.
Governmental immunity is waived. Section 118.006(a) waives immunity to suit and from liability to the extent of the liability the chapter creates. That is the wall that stood for thirty years, and the Legislature took it down for this category of case.
The employee’s immunity is gone too. Section 118.006(b) provides that the employee may not assert official immunity under Subchapter B of Chapter 22 of the Education Code, under the common law, or under any other law, in a Chapter 118 action.
Actual damages are capped at $500,000 per claimant under Section 118.003. Section 118.004 additionally awards court costs and reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees to the prevailing party. Read that in both directions: the statute says a party who prevails, not a claimant who prevails, so a district that wins is entitled to fees as well. That is a real risk to weigh before filing, and it is not something the summaries mention. Section 118.005 makes the remedy cumulative rather than exclusive, so the federal claims below remain available alongside it.
The standard is not ordinary negligence. This is the part most summaries get wrong. The bill as originally filed used a negligence standard. The version that became law requires gross negligence, recklessness or intentional misconduct. Proving a district was merely careless is not enough.
The employee must be named as a defendant in the action. Section 118.002(b) requires it, and Government Code Section 311.034 makes statutory prerequisites to suit against a governmental entity jurisdictional, so the identity of the employee is not a detail to fill in later. It is one of the first things a lawyer will ask.
Chapter 118 does not ask a court whether the abuse happened. It asks whether the school was grossly negligent or reckless, or engaged in intentional misconduct, in hiring, supervising or employing the employee. That question is answered out of the district’s own files: earlier complaints and who received them, whether this employee had been reported before at this district or another, what the pre-employment paperwork disclosed, whether the employee appeared on the state’s registry of people barred from school employment, and what the district did after it knew.
The same Legislature that opened the courthouse door also built the filing cabinet. Senate Bill 571, effective 20 June 2025, moved the educator misconduct rules into a new Chapter 22A of the Education Code and tightened them. A principal who becomes aware of evidence of certain misconduct must notify the superintendent within 48 hours. The superintendent must report to the Texas Education Agency within 48 hours after that, through the agency’s misconduct reporting portal, and the report must also go to the district’s board. A person applying to work in a school must sign a pre-employment affidavit disclosing prior investigations, charges and sanctions. And every district and charter school must adopt a policy for notifying the parent of a student with whom an employee is alleged to have engaged in misconduct, including whether the employee was terminated and whether a report was made to the agency.
Every one of those requirements generates a dated document inside the district. Those documents are what a lawyer asks for first, because they go directly to what the district knew and when it knew it, which is the element the statute turns on and the element a family cannot prove on its own.
An open-enrollment charter school is inside Chapter 118. Section 118.001 defines “public school” as an independent school district or an open-enrollment charter school, so a charter school is treated the same as a district for these purposes.
A private school is outside Chapter 118 entirely, and that is to a family’s advantage rather than its disadvantage. A private school is not a governmental unit and asserts no governmental immunity, so the ordinary claims are available against it without any statutory waiver, without the heightened standard Chapter 118 requires, and without the 1 September 2025 cutoff. If the school was a private or parochial school, see our page on church, camp and private school sexual abuse.
Chapter 118 applies only to an act or omission occurring on or after 1 September 2025.
For abuse before that date, the older framework governs, and under it a Texas school district still cannot be sued in state court for negligent hiring, supervision or retention arising from a student’s sexual abuse. Section 101.051 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code excludes school districts from the Tort Claims Act except as to motor vehicles, and Section 101.057(2) bars claims arising out of assault, battery or any other intentional tort. The Texas Supreme Court closed the obvious workaround in City of Watauga v. Gordon, 434 S.W.3d 586 (Tex. 2014), holding that a claim arising out of a battery is not saved by pleading it as negligence. Quoting a leading torts treatise, the court put it this way: “As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a negligent battery, since battery is defined to require an intentional touching without consent not a negligent one.”
Title IX. 20 U.S.C. § 1681 prohibits sex discrimination by an education program receiving federal financial assistance, and the Supreme Court has held that a damages action lies against the school district itself.
For abuse by a teacher or employee, Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998), holds that damages will not lie “unless an official who at a minimum has authority to address the alleged discrimination and to institute corrective measures on the recipient’s behalf has actual knowledge of discrimination in the recipient’s programs and fails adequately to respond,” and that “the response must amount to deliberate indifference to discrimination.”
For abuse by another student, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999), requires deliberate indifference to harassment of which the district had actual knowledge, where the harassment is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that the victim is “effectively denied equal access” to education.
Who counts as an official with authority is contested and matters, and it is decided on the facts of each district.
Title IX claims run against the district, not against individual employees.
Section 1983. A claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is available against district officials. The controlling Fifth Circuit framework is Doe v. Taylor Independent School District, 15 F.3d 443 (5th Cir. 1994) (en banc), which held that “schoolchildren do have a liberty interest in their bodily integrity that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that physical sexual abuse by a school employee violates that right.” Supervisory liability requires that the official learned of facts or a pattern pointing plainly toward the conclusion that a subordinate was sexually abusing a student, demonstrated deliberate indifference by failing to take action that was obviously necessary, and thereby caused a constitutional injury.
Against the district as an entity, a policy or custom must have been the moving force behind the violation.
This is the single most consequential thing on this page, and it is where families lose cases they would otherwise win.
Texas gives thirty years for many civil claims arising from the sexual abuse of a child, under Section 16.0045(a) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. That period does not apply to Title IX or Section 1983 claims.
Federal claims borrow the state’s general personal injury period, which in Texas is the two years in Section 16.003. The Fifth Circuit held exactly that in King-White v. Humble Independent School District, 803 F.3d 754 (5th Cir. 2015), and reaffirmed it on 4 September 2025 in Jane Doe 1 v. City View Independent School District, No. 24-10592 (5th Cir. 2025), where the claims were dismissed as time barred. In King-White the court held that the argument that “Section 16.0045’s specific limitations period for sexual assault claims should apply over the general two-year period in Section 16.003 is foreclosed” by earlier Fifth Circuit precedent.
The clock is tolled while the student is a minor, so it generally runs from the eighteenth birthday. It is still two years, not thirty.
A family that reads “thirty years” somewhere and waits is at risk of losing the federal claims entirely.
Chapter 118 contains no limitations period of its own, and it has been in effect less than a year. Which period applies to a Chapter 118 claim is an open question, and nobody should rely on an assumption in either direction.
There is a second unanswered question, and it is the one most likely to end a case before it starts. Chapter 118 waives a district’s governmental immunity but says nothing about pre-suit notice. Whether the six-month notice requirement in Section 101.101 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code applies to a Chapter 118 claim is an open question. A district will argue that it does. The safe practice, until a court says otherwise, is to give the notice. Anyone handling one of these cases who has not considered the question is taking a risk with someone else’s claim.
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.
What the district knew, and when.
Personnel files. Prior complaints and what was done with them. Reports made under the Family Code and whether they were made at all. Emails among administrators. Transfer records, where an employee was moved to another campus rather than removed. Prior incidents involving the same person. Training records. Board minutes.
Those documents exist. Getting them is the work.
Schiffer Law Firm represents families in civil claims arising from sexual abuse at schools, 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 and federal law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines in these cases are short and unforgiving; do not rely on a website to calculate yours.
Yes. Chapter 118 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, effective 1 September 2025, creates a claim where a public school is grossly negligent or reckless in hiring, supervising or employing a professional school employee who commits sexual misconduct.
No. It applies prospectively. For earlier conduct the older framework governs, and the federal claims apply either way.
Two years. Federal claims borrow the state personal injury period, and the thirty-year sexual abuse period does not extend them.
Yes. Section 118.003 caps actual damages at $500,000 per claimant, and Section 118.004 awards fees to any prevailing party, which includes a district that wins.
Yes. Section 118.001 defines a public school as an independent school district or an open-enrollment charter school, so a charter school is treated the same as a district.
Chapter 118 does not apply, and that helps the family. A private school has no governmental immunity, so the ordinary negligence claims are available without the heightened standard or the September 2025 cutoff.
