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In many cases, yes, but the answer depends on when the abuse happened. Texas law changed on 1 September 2025. For abuse on or after that date, a new state claim may be available. For earlier abuse, the older rules and the federal claims usually control.
Some summaries online were written from the bill as filed, not the bill as enacted, and the two differ on the standard of proof. What cannot wait is the federal deadline, which in most cases is two years, and the district’s own records. Call 713-521-0059.
For most of the last three decades, your family usually could not sue a school district in state court when a school employee sexually abused your child. The Tort Claims Act does not apply to school districts except as to motor vehicles. It separately bars claims arising out of assault or any other intentional tort. That left your family with federal claims and a two-year deadline.
Section 101.051 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code excludes school districts from the Tort Claims Act except as to motor vehicles. Section 101.057(2) bars claims arising out of assault, battery or any other intentional tort. For abuse before 1 September 2025, a district generally still cannot be sued in state court for negligent hiring, supervision or retention arising from a student’s sexual abuse.
The Texas Supreme Court closed the obvious workaround in City of Watauga v. Gordon, 434 S.W.3d 586 (Tex. 2014). It held that a claim arising out of a battery is not saved by pleading it as negligence. The court quoted a leading torts treatise. “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.”
The 89th Legislature passed House Bill 4623. It created Chapter 118 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, effective 1 September 2025. Chapter 118 applies only to an act or omission occurring on or after 1 September 2025. Which law applies to your family depends on when the abuse happened.
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. That employee must commit sexual misconduct against an enrolled student or fail to report suspected child abuse under Section 261.101 of the Family Code.
Section 118.006(a) waives immunity to suit and from liability to the extent of the liability the chapter creates. 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.
The standard you have to meet is not ordinary negligence. The bill as originally filed appears to have used a negligence standard. The version that became law requires gross negligence, recklessness or intentional misconduct. In most cases, it will not be enough for you to show that a district was merely careless.
Section 118.003 caps actual damages at $500,000 per claimant. Section 118.004 awards court costs and reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees to the prevailing party. The statute says a party who prevails, not a claimant who prevails. So a district that wins may be entitled to fees as well, and you should weigh that risk before filing. Section 118.005 makes the remedy cumulative rather than exclusive, so the federal claims remain available alongside it.
You must name the employee as a defendant, because Section 118.002(b) requires it. Government Code Section 311.034 makes statutory prerequisites to suit against a governmental entity jurisdictional. That means the employee’s identity is one of the first things a lawyer will need from you.
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. You usually answer that from the district’s own files. Those files can show earlier complaints and who received them, prior reports about this employee at this district or another, and what the pre-employment paperwork disclosed. They can also show whether the employee was on the state’s registry of people barred from school employment, and what the district did once it knew.
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. The superintendent must also notify the board, and the employee, that the report was filed.
A person applying to work in a school must sign a pre-employment affidavit disclosing prior investigations, charges and sanctions. 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. That notice includes whether the employee was terminated and whether a report was made to the agency. Each of these steps creates a dated document inside the district, and those documents go to what the district knew and when.
Your child’s school still had an obligation to act on what it knew, though the federal standard differs, as described below. Schools put children together every day, on buses, in locker rooms and in unsupervised hours, and children can abuse other children there.
Chapter 118 is written in terms of the district’s own conduct in hiring, supervising and employing professional school employees, and in reporting. For harassment of one student by another, the route is usually a Title IX claim. The standard for that claim comes from Davis, described below.
The age of the child who committed the abuse can affect a claim against that child’s family. It does not change what the school owed your child. Our page on when a child sexually assaults another child covers the family side.
Every adult who has reasonable cause to believe a child has been abused or neglected must report it under Family Code Section 261.101(a). A professional must report not later than the 24th hour under Section 261.101(b). An employee who fails to report suspected child abuse under Section 261.101 is one of the ways Chapter 118 can apply.
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 here.
A private school is outside Chapter 118, and that often works in your favor. A private school is not a governmental unit and asserts no governmental immunity. The ordinary claims are usually available to you against it without a statutory waiver, without the heightened standard, and without the 1 September 2025 cutoff. If your child was at a private or parochial school, see our page on church, camp and private school sexual abuse.
The federal claims apply whenever the abuse happened. Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, prohibits sex discrimination by an education program receiving federal financial assistance. The Supreme Court has held that a damages action lies against the school district itself. Title IX claims generally run against the district, not against individual employees.
For abuse by a teacher or employee, the standard comes from Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998). The court held 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.” Who counts as an official with authority is often disputed, and it is decided on the facts of each district.
For abuse by another student, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999), requires deliberate indifference to harassment the district actually knew about. The harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that the victim is “effectively denied equal access” to education.
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). It 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 three things. The official learned of facts or a pattern pointing plainly toward the conclusion that a subordinate was sexually abusing a student. The official showed deliberate indifference by failing to take action that was obviously necessary. And that failure caused a constitutional injury. Against the district as an entity, a claim usually requires that a policy or custom was the moving force behind the violation.
Under Section 16.0045(a) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, Texas gives you thirty years for many civil claims arising from the sexual abuse of a child. 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 that in King-White v. Humble Independent School District, 803 F.3d 754 (5th Cir. 2015). 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 United States Supreme Court decisions. It reaffirmed the rule 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.
The clock is tolled while the student is a minor, so it generally runs from the eighteenth birthday. It is still usually two years, not thirty. If you read “thirty years” somewhere and wait, you may lose the federal claims entirely.
Chapter 118 has no limitations period of its own, and it has been in effect for just over a year. Which period applies to a Chapter 118 claim is an open question. You should not rely on an assumption in either direction.
Possibly. 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 likely argue that it does. Until a court decides it, the careful course is for you to give the notice.
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.
In most cases, the question is what the district knew, and when. The records that answer it include personnel files, prior complaints and what was done with them, and reports made under the Family Code, or whether they were made at all. They also include emails among administrators, transfer records where an employee was moved to another campus rather than removed, prior incidents involving the same person, training records and board minutes. Those documents exist, and your lawyer can ask for them.
We start with the date of the abuse, because it decides which law applies and which deadline is running. Then we ask the district for its records in writing, identify the employee who must be named, and decide whether pre-suit notice should go out. We also check for a private school, a contractor or another party that may share responsibility.
Schiffer Law Firm is a Houston personal injury firm with 50 plus years of combined experience representing injured people and survivors across Texas.
If you are a parent, an advocate or a counselor asking on someone’s behalf, you are welcome to call with a general question. We will not ask you for their name.
There is no charge to talk, and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.
Written by Jacob Schiffer, Attorney, Schiffer Law Firm. State Bar of Texas No. 24105175.
Call 713-521-0059.
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.
By its terms, no. It applies to an act or omission on or after 1 September 2025. For earlier conduct the older framework usually governs, and the federal claims can apply either way.
In most cases, two years. Federal claims borrow the state personal injury period, and the thirty-year sexual abuse period does not extend them. The clock is usually tolled until your child turns 18.
Yes. Section 118.003 caps actual damages at $500,000 per claimant. Section 118.004 awards fees to the prevailing party, which can include a district that wins.
The school still had to act on what it knew. Under Davis, a Title IX claim can lie where the district was deliberately indifferent to harassment it actually knew about, and the harassment was "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive" that the victim was "effectively denied equal access" to education. The other child's age can affect a claim against that child's family, but it does not change what the school owed your child.
Section 118.001 treats an open-enrollment charter school the same as a district. A private school is outside Chapter 118 and has no governmental immunity, so the ordinary negligence claims are usually available without the heightened standard or the September 2025 cutoff.