The Brief

California’s K-12 schools will take far-ranging steps to prevent sexual abuse on campus — including building a database of teachers under investigation for misconduct — under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Senate Bill 848, sponsored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat from Alhambra, stems from a slew of recent lawsuits over sexual abuse in California schools, as well as a news report on decades of sexual abuse by at least a dozen teachers at a high school in her district.

“I’m proud to see this bill move forward. It’s been really personal for me,” said Pérez, who recently told CalMatters that she was the victim of a teacher’s inappropriate interest while she was in high school. “For survivors, this is an important step toward justice.”

The law goes into effect Jan. 1, and applies to all K-12 schools in California, including private schools.

Among other things, the law requires schools to train teachers, coaches and other school staff on how to prevent and report sexual misconduct; broadens the number of staff who are required to report abuse allegations; and requires schools to write comprehensive policies on appropriate behavior.

But the database is perhaps the most significant change. Administered by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the database is intended to stop teachers facing credible accusations of abuse from quitting and getting rehired at another school, potentially abusing more children. The database will be available to schools as part of their employee screening process, and would be updated if allegations against a teacher prove to be unfounded.

Although sexual abuse has long occurred in schools, the extent of the problem came to light in 2020 after the passage of AB 218, which made it easier for victims to sue school districts and other government agencies over sexual abuse. The law opened a floodgate of lawsuits that have so far cost California schools more than $3 billion and brought some districts to the brink of insolvency.

Another bill’s failure

The large payouts inspired another bill this year, which would have provided some relief for school districts faced with lawsuits over decades-old abuse claims while still allowing victims to be compensated. Senate bill SB 577, sponsored by State Sen. John Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, stalled in the Assembly.

The bill didn’t cap settlements or attorney fees, but it called for a statute of limitations on older incidents and would have made it easier for school districts to issue bonds to pay settlements, which in California have mostly ranged from $5 million to $10 million.

“I am disappointed that SB 577 will not be advancing this year,” Laird said in an email. “I had hoped to protect survivors’ access to justice while finding some fiscal relief to local governments. Despite these months of hard work, it was just impossible to balance these interests to get to a successful outcome this year.”

Laird said he hopes to resurrect the bill next year.

Financial hardships for districts

School districts were devastated by SB 577’s failure. Some had canceled preschool programs and field trips, frozen salaries or laid off staff and taken other steps to pay legal settlements. The expenses come at a difficult time for schools, as pandemic relief grants have recently expired and enrollment continues to decline in many parts of the state.

Montecito Union School District, a 350-student district near Santa Barbara, last month settled an abuse lawsuit for $7.5 million — nearly half its annual budget — for alleged sexual abuse by a former staff member between 1972 and 1978.

Nearby Carpinteria Unified has also been affected.

“We are very frustrated that legislators failed to assist California school districts who have been forced to defend themselves against decades-old claims, spending millions of dollars that impact current students and families,” said Diana Rigby, superintendent of Carpinteria Unified. “Our district has been severely impacted by the financial burden of defending four lawsuits from the 1970s.”

Advocates for SB 577 said that trial attorneys were behind the bill’s failure. Attorneys earn up to 30% to 40% on legal settlements, and have been advertising around California in search of people who were abused in schools.

In the final days of the legislative session, ads circulated on social media featuring a photo of Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas with the words, “Stop the Predator Protection Law” and “Stand with child victims.” The ads were paid for by the law firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, a national firm with offices in Irvine and Riverside, which specializes in sex abuse claims.

John Manly, a partner in the firm, said he bought the ads to pressure Rivas to reject the bill.

“If I have to spend every last dime to protect a child from being abused, I will do that,” Manly said. “I’ve spent my career doing this, and I’m not going to stop.”

Manly, the lead attorney in the lawsuit against former Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar, said he’d fight any legislation that curbs abuse lawsuits. He also said Pérez’s bill doesn’t go far enough: it should include felony charges for mandated reporters who fail to report suspected abuse, and it should require school districts to publish the names of staff who’ve been “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct.

He expects the fight to continue next year and beyond.

Consumer Attorneys of California, a lobbying group, was neutral on Laird’s bill.

“Although CAOC had no official position on the bill, we thought it struck the right balance between protecting survivors' rights and addressing issues relating to public entities,” said Jonathan Underland, spokesperson for Consumer Attorneys of California. “We were disappointed to see that it did not cross the finish line.”

Eventually, state political leaders will have to take action on abuse lawsuits because too many schools and government agencies are facing insolvency, endangering programs that millions of people rely on, said Ben Adler, public affairs director for the California State Association of Counties.

“God bless Senator Laird for taking this on. It was a thankless task,” Adler said. “Moving forward, there has to be a way to ensure justice for survivors without bankrupting schools and counties, which provide a social safety net. The governor and the Legislature will have to get everyone in a room to figure this thing out.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

With fewer than six weeks to go before the June election, candidates running for City of L.A. and Los Angeles Unified School District offices have raised a combined $19 million, according to records from the L.A. City Ethics Commission.

Campaigns for mayor, District 11 City Council member and city attorney have emerged as the most funded races.

Here’s how they stack up:

L.A. mayor

Mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Adam Miller are leading all L.A. city candidates in fundraising, with $3.7 million and $2.7 million raised so far, respectively.

The candidates have tapped into very different sources to fund their campaigns.

Miller, a tech entrepreneur and leader of multiple nonprofits, has loaned $2.5 million to his own campaign and raised just $223,000 from donors since entering the race in February.

Bass, on the other hand, had already gathered more than $2.3 million in contributions by January. She’d received some of those donations as far back as July 2024.

The city’s matching funds program has also given Bass a nearly $874,000 boost over Miller, who did not qualify to receive a 6-to-1 match from the city on donations that meet certain criteria.

Nithya Raman, City Council member for L.A.’s District 4, has had the quickest growth in donor support out of all candidates for mayor after entering the race in February.

She’s received a combined $1.1 million from direct contributions and matching funds from the city.

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt has received about $538,000 in contributions, and Presbyterian minister and community organizer Rae Huang has taken in about $273,000.

District 11

Traci Park, who is the current City Council member for the 11th district, has brought in about $1.4 million so far through contributions and matching funds.

Faizah Malik is an attorney at the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel and is challenging Park for her council seat. She has raised about $632,000.

This race also has the largest amount of outside spending across the city and LAUSD.

About $972,000 has been spent in support of Park, including about $634,000 from the Los Angeles Police Protective League and $297,000 from a committee sponsored by United Firefighters of L.A. City.

Unite Here, a labor union representing hospitality workers, has spent more than $220,000 in support of Malik.

City attorney

Hydee Feldstein Soto, the incumbent city attorney, has raised nearly $1.2 million in contributions and matching funds.

Marissa Roy, deputy attorney general, has raised nearly $1 million in her race to unseat Feldstein Soto.

Deputy District Attorney John McKinney and human rights attorney Aida Ashouri have raised about $73,000 and $14,000, respectively, in the race.

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump's executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president's plan to crack down on migration.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can't circumvent that.

The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was "suspending the physical entry" of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over.

The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn't authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under "procedures of his own making," allow him to suspend plaintiffs' right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.

"The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA's mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals," wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.

"We conclude that the INA's text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts," the opinion said.

White House says asylum ban was within Trump's powers

The administration can ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling or go to the Supreme Court.

The order doesn't formally take effect until after the court considers any request to reconsider.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, said she had not seen the ruling but called it "unsurprising," blaming politically-motivated judges.

"They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens," she said.

Leavitt said Trump was taking actions that are "completely within his powers as commander in chief."

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. "We are sure we will be vindicated," she wrote in an emailed statement.

The Department of Homeland Security said it strongly disagreed with the ruling.

"President Trump's top priority remains the screening and vetting of all aliens seeking to come, live, or work in the United States," DHS said in a statement.

Advocates welcome the ruling

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that previous legal action had already paused the asylum ban, and the ruling won't change much on the ground.

The ruling, however, represents another legal defeat for a centerpiece policy of the president.

"This confirms that President Trump cannot on his own bar people from seeking asylum, that it is Congress that has mandated that asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum and the President cannot simply invoke his authority to sustain," said Reichlin-Melnick.

Advocates say the right to request asylum is enshrined in the country's immigration law and say denying migrants that right puts people fleeing war or persecution in grave danger.

Lee Gelernt, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, said in a statement that the appellate ruling is "essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration's unlawful and inhumane executive order."

Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the court decision as a victory for their clients.

"Today's DC Circuit ruling affirms that capricious actions by the President cannot supplant the rule of law in the United States," said Nicolas Palazzo, director of advocacy and legal Services at Las Americas.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.

Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, also heard the case.

In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find "detrimental to the interests of the United States."

The executive order also suspended the ability of migrants to ask for asylum.

Trump's order was another blow to asylum access in the U.S., which was severely curtailed under the Biden administration, although under Biden some pathways for protections for a limited number of asylum seekers at the southern border continued.

Migrant advocate in Mexico expresses cautious hope

For Josue Martinez, a psychologist who works at a small migrant shelter in southern Mexico, the ruling marked a potential "light at the end of the tunnel" for many migrants who once hoped to seek asylum in the U.S. but ended up stuck in vulnerable conditions in Mexico.

"I hope there's something more concrete, because we've heard this kind of news before: A district judge files an appeal, there's a temporary hold, but it's only temporary and then it's over," he said.

Meanwhile, migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries have struggled to make ends meet as they try to seek refuge in Mexico's asylum system that's all but collapsed under the weight of new strains and slashed international funds.

This week hundreds of migrants, mostly stranded migrants from Haiti, left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on foot to seek better living conditions elsewhere in Mexico.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California’s trial courts will have to collect and report data on civil arrests at their facilities, including those by federal immigration agents, under a rule approved Friday by the state’s judicial policymaking body.

The new requirement by the Judicial Council of California comes in response to an unprecedented rise in detentions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at superior courts across California’s judicial system, the nation’s largest. Attorneys, judges and public safety advocates have criticized the practice.

“Our court users have expressed concern and hesitation about coming to court. That concern has been amplified by additional visits to the Oroville courthouse by federal officers,” Sharif Elmallah, the court executive officer of the Superior Court of Butte County, told the council of mostly judges and attorneys Friday. “We know that when individuals fear potential arrest and enforcement actions, many will choose not to appear, even when required to by court order.”

Elmallah said immigration enforcement officers apprehended several people who had cases before the court in Oroville on a single day in July. The agents have kept operating at the court, he added, including as recently as Wednesday of this week.

Victims of crimes such as domestic violence, sexual abuse and wage theft, advocates say, are declining to seek relief in court out of fear of encountering immigration enforcement there, hurting people’s access to justice.

“Making courthouses a focus of immigration enforcement hinders, rather than helps, the administration of justice by deterring witnesses and victims from coming forward and discouraging individuals from asserting their rights,” California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said in earlier statements.

The Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland, seen on April 2, 2019.

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Stephanie Lister

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California already prohibits arrests related to immigration offenses and other civil law violations at court buildings, except when the enforcement agency has a written order signed by a judge, known as a judicial warrant. But immigrant advocates, public defenders and others say the state law lacks teeth, arguing that ICE has flouted it without any repercussions so far.

Meanwhile, a bill working its way through the state Legislature aims to strengthen the ban on courthouse civil arrests and expand protections for people going to and from courts.

Under the Judicial Council’s separate new rule, the state’s 58 trial courts starting in June will be required to track and report whether officers identified themselves, presented a warrant or took an individual into custody, as well as the date and location of each incident.

While the move will help state officials understand the scope of the issue, it won’t protect people’s fundamental right to access the courts, said Tina Rosales-Torres, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty who estimates that ICE has conducted hundreds of arrests at California courts since January 2025, when President Donald Trump took office.

“That’s a good first step. It is good to have data. I do not think it is sufficient to meet the crisis that we are in,” she said.

“So it is going to be helpful to kind of see at least a snippet of what is happening,” Rosales-Torres added. “But then what? The Judicial Council hasn’t proposed a solution, and data is only as effective as we use it.”

Immigration arrests at California courthouses used to be rare, reserved for cases involving national security or other significant threats. As recently as 2021, during the first year of the Biden administration, top ICE officials recognized that routinely apprehending people in or near courts would spread fear and hurt the fair administration of justice.

Since last year, as authorities moved to fulfill Trump’s mass deportation promises, federal officers have approached and handcuffed at least dozens of people at court hallways, exits and parking lots in Alameda, Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento and other counties. In San Bernardino, TV cameras filmed agents in black vests restraining several men at the Rancho Cucamonga court parking lot in a single day this month.

Some attorneys now warn clients they could see immigration enforcement in court.

Witnesses are failing to show up, and others are opting out of fighting legitimate cases, said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association. She and Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods wrote an opinion piece condemning ICE’s presence in state courts after the agency arrested a man leaving a court hearing in Oakland in September.

“It’s a foundational element of democracy to have a functioning court system,” Chatfield said. “And when people are afraid to go to court for whatever reason, you’ve really denied justice to an entire segment of our residents.”

SB 873, the bill that would strengthen California’s ban on civil arrests at courthouses, would also authorize the attorney general and those who are arrested to sue over violations. People would be entitled to damages of $10,000. The bill, by state Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, D–San Bernardino, is supported by the California Public Defenders Association, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and other groups.

It is part of a larger pushback in California against a surge in immigration enforcement netting more people without criminal convictions in cities’ public areas, parking lots of stores like Home Depot and at routine immigration check-ins. SB 1103, for instance, would require big-box home improvement retailers to report ICE enforcement activity at their facilities.

Other states, such as New York, also prohibit the civil arrests of people at courthouses or those traveling to and from such facilities unless an officer has a judicial warrant. The Trump administration challenged New York’s law last year, but a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

The restaurant:

If you’re driving along York Boulevard toward Eagle Rock, you’ll see a variety of Mediterranean, Mexican and pizza spots.

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill stands out as a seafood spot with a menu that offers oysters, fish-centric entrees and desserts like their derby pie. The restaurant has been around since 2023, brought to life by business partners Ari Kolender, who's executive chef, and Joe Laraja, who serves as managing director.

The food: 

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill takes inspiration from South Carolina’s seafood scene, where Kolender grew up. Unlike the New England feel of their other restaurant, Found Oyster, Queen’s focuses on southern classics and refreshing raw bar food.

The interior of Queen's Raw Bar and Grill, including the signature oyster bar.

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What we tried: tuna tostada, mackerel tartare and pimento cheese sliders.

The verdict:

“The flavor is so incredible [and] intense,” said AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross about the tuna tostada. “Everything comes together perfectly.”

“It’s got the acids down pat,” Austin said of the mackerel tartare. “The capers are doing their part, and then the dill does give it that finish you get traditionally in some Jewish foods.”

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