What did – and didn’t – happen during the 2025 legislative session

The rights of childhood sexual abuse survivors were under attack in 2025; also – an important deadline on survival actions

2025 October

When this year’s legislative session ended on September 12, these CAOC- sponsored bills had been sent to Governor Newsom’s desk (none had yet been signed when this was written; the governor has until October 12 to act on legislation):

AB 251 (Kalra): Gives judges discretion to lower the burden of proof in elder abuse cases involving spoliation.

SB 37 (Umberg) and AB 931 (Kalra): Our ethics and advertising package, addresses attorney advertising, non-recourse consumer litigation financing, and alternative business structures.

SB 82 (Umberg): Prohibits “infinite arbitration clauses.”

SB 645 (Umberg): Addresses peremptory challenges.

The rights of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivors were under attack this year. These are the proposed changes that CAOC defeated:

Five percent contingency-fee limit on all childhood sexual abuse (CSA) cases against a public entity prior to filing or a demand for arbitration.

Ten percent contingency-fee limit on all CSA cases against a public entity for any recovery after that time.

A cap on non-economic damages on all CSA cases against a public entity of $450,000, regardless of the number of defendants or number of incidents.

No CSA cases may be filed after a person’s 26th birthday.

The burden of proof in all CSA cases is set at clear and convincing evidence.

But the battle is not over; these proposals will be back in 2026. Here’s how we got here.

The year started with a proposal by Senator Ben Allen that would have severely limited the legal rights of survivors by retroactively changing the standard of proof for childhood sex abuse claims from the normal “preponderance of evidence” standard to the much higher “clear and convincing” standard, among other things. CAOC opposed the proposal and asked Senator John Laird if he would instead carry a bill (SB 577) to be a vehicle for balanced reform. Your team met weekly with representatives of Los Angeles County and legislators in a good-faith effort to find that balance. We believe that difficult balance did mostly exist in SB 577, and we had worked diligently to discuss changes with survivor groups and many of you (we had hundreds of calls and Zooms). Senator Laird was amazing, and we all owe him a great deal of thanks. We thought it was critical to address mounting liability issues rather than end up with a wholesale destruction of survivor’s rights, which was being actively pursued by the public entities.

We were very close to an agreement that involved Los Angeles County, CAOC and key victims’ groups, but then Los Angeles County counsel hired a lobbying firm that demanded the onerous and anti-survivor changes listed above. Their proposal had backing from key members of the Assembly. However, this overreach caused a year of negotiations to implode. In the end, nothing passed – there were no changes this legislative session to survivor claims.

Your CAOC team is here for you as we know this issue will resurface, along with a broader push on all public entity cases, in January. We will be working actively throughout the fall on a legislative, communication and coalition outreach plan.

Important note on survival actions

Because of legislative inaction this year, the CAOC-sponsored statute that allows pre-death pain-and-suffering damages in survival actions (Code Civ. Proc., § 3 77.34) will expire on December 31, 2025. The statute’s protections apply only to cases filed on or before that date. CAOC successfully sponsored the original legislation in 2021, but to secure passage, it included a “sunset” provision ending on January 1, 2026. This year, we sponsored SB 29 (Laird) to extend the statute. Unfortunately:

The bill was stalled in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, as some wanted to use it as leverage for public entity tort reform (which we defeated). Their proposals would have gutted child sexual abuse victims’ rights, imposed damage caps and attorney’s fees caps in those cases.

The medical industry convinced Planned Parenthood to work against SB 29, leading to additional resistance in the Legislative Women’s Caucus.

Released from committee just three days before session ended, SB 29 lacked the time to gather votes for final passage.

With the statute about to expire, we recommend you:

File your survival action cases on or before December 31, 2025, to preserve your clients’ rights to these damages.

For claims against a governmental entity, you should act even sooner. Submit government claims by November 14, 2025. This allows time for the maximum 45-day response period under Gov’t Code § 912.4 before you can then properly file a lawsuit on or before December 31, 2025.

SB 29 is not dead and remains eligible for action in January. However, until the statute is extended, it is vital that you protect your clients by filing before the current December 31, 2025, expiration date.

A full legislative report will be available shortly. Thank you for standing with us and supporting CAOC’s legislative team. Together, we continue to defend and expand access to justice.

Correction from August Issue

In the August 2025 issue of Advocate, the CAOC column titled “Let’s be honest about our advertising” mistakenly named the author as Jacqueline Serna. That column was actually written by Nancy Peverini. We apologize for the error and have corrected it on our website – Editor.