Chanting “survivors united will never be defeated,” a coalition of youth justice and foster care advocates rallied Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles in support of sexual abuse survivors seeking justice.
Since the passage of a 2020 state law allowing adult victims to sue their abusers, Los Angeles County has paid out billions of dollars to settle claims based on incidents that allegedly occurred in local juvenile detention centers and a now-shuttered children’s shelter.
To reel in the spiraling cost, county officials and state lawmakers are trying to revive a failed 2025 bill that would limit the rights of these survivors to sue.
Angela Arroyo, 20, spoke at the rally outside the county’s Hall of Administration and called the effort “a direct attack on survivors.”
“Don’t take away our voice and our chance at justice,” Arroyo told the crowd of about 40 people. She recounted her experience inside L.A. County juvenile detention facilities as a teenager, and described how difficult it is for survivors to come forward after traumatic experiences.
Advocates evoked the name of longtime labor right champion Dolores Huerta, who at age 95 revealed her account of sexual abuse decades ago by Cesar Chavez, the deceased leader of the farmworker rights movement. Since then, the country has rallied to support her and other young women he is said to have abused.
“We will not stand for a rollback on the rights of survivors at a time when people are finding their strength and coming forward with their stories of abuse,” said De Anna Pittman, program manager of youth and leadership policy with the Young Women’s Freedom Center.
Los Angeles County has been engulfed by more than 11,000 claims of sex abuse in juvenile detention and foster care facilities since the 2020 state law took effect. Assembly Bill 218 changed the statute of limitations to allow adult survivors of childhood sexual assault to sue their abusers. In addition to juvenile halls and shelters, school districts and churches where alleged abuses occurred have also been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle such suits that date as far back as the 1950s.
In 2025, the county agreed to two major settlements totaling nearly $5 billion dollars. About 90% of those claims were for abuse that occurred in the county’s juvenile detention facilities.
Since those announcements, officials said there have been 5,000 more lawsuits filed against county departments, with an average of 150 new claims arriving every month.
Acting Chief Executive Officer Joseph Nicchitta said the county’s liability for sexual assault claims in its juvenile detention facilities and the former MacLaren Children’s Center has resulted in cuts to numerous county programs and services, including programming in public parks and youth jobs programs. He said the county has set aside $300 million in this year’s budget to pay survivors, but additional lawsuits would create even more strain on the budget.
“It is something that’s going to weigh on us going forward,” Nicchitta said.
School districts statewide are facing another $2 to $3 billion in lawsuit costs, according to a 2025 report from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an organization that helps California’s education system manage finances and data.
Last year, Los Angeles County officials pushed for passage of Senate Bill 577, which would have placed a greater burden on victims to prove past abuse, and narrowed the window to file legal claims.
However, after several contentious hearings, the bill died before a full vote of the state Assembly that would have sent it to the governor’s desk.
This year, the issue has returned. At an event in February, Supervisor Kathryn Barger said without reform, AB 218 could cost other counties billions of dollars in payouts.
“I want them in Sacramento to fix it,” Barger told attendees at an event in February covered by The L.A. Times. “I have to believe that we are the tip of the iceberg.”
In Sacramento, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has formed a bipartisan task force of state legislators to “explore solutions that strike the right balance on this critical issue,” EdSource reported.
Senate Bill 577 is currently inactive and there has not been an updated version introduced. But earlier this year, Los Angeles County and the California State Association of Counties both circulated similar proposals that included language identical to the bill.Lobbyists for the counties want lawsuit protection extended beyond publicly run facilities, to include foster homes, foster care agencies and residential treatment facilities.
Chantel Johnson, a directing advocate with the Youth Law Center, said a bill based on these proposals “would create a two-tiered system of justice where survivors abused in government custody have fewer rights than other survivors.”
At the Tuesday rally, several speakers addressed state legislators. La Defensa Executive Director Ivette Alé-Ferlito said the moment demands moral clarity and political courage from state and county leaders in the face of budget strain. Lawmakers should reject the intent behind SB 577, “and anything it morphs into.”
“A yes vote is choosing to protect institutions over survivors,” Alé-Ferlito said.
