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← Signal: State & Power

California Lawmakers Pass Bill to Penalize School Administrators Who Fail to Vet Teachers for Past Misconduct

Confirmed1 source · Aug 31, 2026

Legislation adds enforcement teeth to existing hiring requirements after a KQED-ProPublica investigation found educators hired despite prior substantiated sexual misconduct allegations.

California Lawmakers Pass Bill to Penalize School Administrators Who Fail to Vet Teachers for Past Misconduct
Image via ProPublica

What happened

California lawmakers unanimously passed a bill authored by Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi that authorizes the state's teacher licensing agency to discipline teachers and administrators—including revoking credentials—who fail to comply with background check mandates requiring schools to verify previous employers' reports of misconduct. The legislation was prompted by a KQED-ProPublica investigation documenting at least 14 educators who were hired by new schools after former employers reported them to the state for sexual harassment or other sexual misconduct. The bill represents a scaled-back version of Muratsuchi's original proposal, which would have created a searchable database of teachers reported for misconduct; that database idea was abandoned after opposition from California's powerful teachers unions and concerns from the state licensing agency about privacy laws and legal liability. Governor Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto the legislation.

Context

Current law, in place since 2025, requires school applicants to list all prior teaching positions and mandates that administrators check with previous employers about substantiated misconduct reports, but lacks penalties for non-compliance. The existing enforcement gap has allowed a window for educators to seek new positions before red flags appear in the state database—a process that typically takes one year. The case of Matthew Shelton, a Benicia Unified teacher reported in 2023 for inappropriate touching, exemplifies this gap: he was hired as an assistant principal at another district weeks after resigning, before any flag appeared in the state database and before his license was ultimately suspended and later revoked. School administrators argue that the current system places operational burdens on districts with limited resources and that a centralized database would be more efficient, though unions and the licensing agency raised concerns about privacy and legal liability that led to the bill's revision.