LINCOLN — Officials in public schools or other Nebraska political subdivisions could be held liable if they fail to protect children in their care through a proposal inching forward in the Legislature.

, introduced by State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, was the subject of multiple days of debate and negotiations that ultimately resulted in a replacement of Hastings State Sen. Steve Halloran’s on Tuesday to become Wayne’s LB 25. The changes also leaned closer in some provisions involving legal liability to from State Sen. George Dungan of Lincoln.

The amended LB 25 could allow lawsuits — in the case of child abuse or sexual assault of a child — against political subdivisions or their employees who have a duty to protect children against the crimes.

The harm must be a “proximate result” of the political subdivision’s failure or an employee’s failure to exercise “reasonable care” to care for a child in their care or custody.

“Nothing is going to make these individuals completely whole,” Wayne told the Nebraska Examiner after the votes. “We’re just trying to provide the best remedy we can under the law.”

Wayne offered the amendment, which was adopted . Lawmakers then voted to advance LB 25 on a , with eight lawmakers “present, not voting.”

Opening ‘Pandora’s Box’

State Sen. Carolyn Bosn of Lincoln, a former prosecutor, led opposition to the measure, arguing that if school officials have knowledge of wrongdoing and fail to investigate, which is required under “reasonable care,” they can already be held accountable. She ultimately did not vote on LB 25 or any amendments.

Dungan and Wayne, who are also  lawyers, disagreed that the law Bosn pointed to would be adequate.

Bosn said she negotiated on a possible amendment with State Sens. Ben Hansen of Blair and Mike Jacobson of North Platte, possibly to cap recovery damages at $500,000.

Jacobson said those conversations also included whether to limit the scope of the bill to K-12 schools or add options for victims beyond lawsuits. Bosn said she wanted support on the front end and not after a harm has occurred.

LB 25 could favor attorneys representing families or children who have been harmed, Jacobson argued, as lawyers would be looking for “deep pockets.”

“I’m just saying you’re opening up Pandora’s Box when you go this route,” Jacobson said.

Dungan said there may always be “ambulance chasers” seeking money, but he joined Wayne in stating that lawyers have an ethical duty not to file frivolous lawsuits and noted that judges can throw cases out if they determine the actions are frivolous.

Goals of ‘protecting children’

State Sens. Steve Erdman of Bayard and Julie Slama of Dunbar both criticized opponents to Wayne’s bill who have said they want to protect children but voted against Wayne’s bill.

Erdman, who often is closely aligned with Halloran, defended the effort as targeting schools that aren’t doing everything right. If they are, “they have nothing to fear.”

He said he couldn’t understand why LB 25 was controversial and that when he returns to his district in western Nebraska, he can say he did everything to protect Nebraska’s most vulnerable while some of his colleagues thought protecting the state was more important.

“When you vote, you will clarify to the voters, to the public, where you really stand on protecting children,” Erdman said.

Slama pointed to other bills that were debated this session with a stated goal to protect children from or to based on students’ sex at birth. The introducers of those bills, State Sens. Joni Albrecht of Thurston and Kathleen Kauth of Omaha, opposed Wayne’s amendment and voted against advancing LB 25.

Halloran told the Examiner he was happy there would be some parity to hold public schools accountable when similar lawsuits are already allowed against private schools.

Some opponents argued allowing lawsuits against public schools would increase property taxes.

Slama challenged opponents on that point.

“How many child molesters is your school district employing if it’s going to impact your bottom line?” she asked.

Accountability and recovery

State Sen. Christy Armendariz of Omaha said she supports suing any entity if its employees  commit crimes against children but wanted LB 25 to be more refined, such as more closely targeting criminals.

“We have very little, if any, control over policies, hiring, employee practices within a school building,” Armendariz said. “To reach out to the taxpayer to pay the financial penalty would be extremely ineffective at changing the culture we’re trying to change.”

Armendariz told the Examiner that LB 25 is an opportunity to put everyone on notice that harming a child is “absolutely not acceptable,” but she said the bill “completely misses that point.”

She said holding employees financially accountable could change a culture and suggested that lawmakers should allow victims to go after funds the employee may be connected to, such as employee unions or health care and pension plans.

“That’s outside of the box thinking, but maybe those pension funds need to be held accountable to the offenders that they support,” Armendariz said.

Wayne said once a perpetrator is behind bars, there may be no financial recovery left, but he said a bigger issue is whether schools, cities or counties are aware that harm is possible and that if they don’t act, that should come with some liability.

“I’m proud of this Legislature today, and I think we’re passing a bill that can help kids,” Wayne said.

With three days left in the legislative session, LB 25 will need to return for debate sometime Wednesday. If it advances, the final vote will be taken on the last day of the session: April 18.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Gov. Tony Evers signed education-related legislation Friday, including a measure to tighten protections for students against strip searches and sexual misconduct.

One measure, Senate Bill 111, , was introduced in reaction to a 2022 incident in which a Suring School District employee, who was searching for vaping devices, allegedly ordered six teenage girls to undress down to their underwear. Neither the students’ parents or law enforcement were informed about or present at the time of the strip search.

The law redefines the meaning of “strip search” and “private area” to include undergarments in order to protect students from any official, employee or agent of any school or school district conducting strip searches.

Rep. David Steffen (R-Green Bay), who coauthored the legislation, said in a statement that “being treated with dignity and basic privacy is something that every student should expect when they enter our schools.

“The event at Suring revealed a statutory loophole that needed to be closed,” Steffen said. “This bill will protect our students from experiencing such intrusive searches in the future.”

Another measure, Senate Bill 333, , seeks to better protect students by making sexual misconduct against a student by any school staff member or volunteer a Class I felony. It also adds more violations to the offenses where the state superintendent would be required to revoke a license  without a hearing, and prohibits a licensee from ever having their license reinstated by the state superintendent if they are convicted of a crime against a child that is a Class H felony or higher or a felony invasion of privacy or sexual misconduct by a school staff person or volunteer.

Other education-related legislation includes:

SB 447, , which allows schools and school districts to get prescriptions for glucagon — a treatment for people with known Type 1 diabetes. It also allows schools to authorize school personnel to administer the glucagon to someone at school if the student’s prescribed glucagon isn’t available and grants civil liability immunity to a school and its school personnel. AB 223, , which provides civil immunity for schools and school personnel for administering an opioid antagonist in a school setting. AB 914, , which allows schools to adopt a plan for management of students who have asthma to administer a short-acting bronchodilator, for the prescription for a short-acting bronchodilator to be issued in the name of a school and grants immunity from civil liability.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Within seven minutes of receiving a 911 call about an active shooter in a St. Louis high school, police and armed security guards were already in the building and engaging the suspect in gun fire. 

The immediate response by police and school security on Oct. 24 at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School has drawn praise and received credit for minimizing loss of life. 

However, a day after the tragedy, St. Louis Public School District officials faced questions abouts why the seven security guards stationed inside the school weren’t armed. 

The district employs 25 armed guards who patrol outside schools, district officials said, but district policy forbids firearms inside buildings. 

“We thought it was best for us, for our officers and for the normalcy of school for kids to not have officers armed in the school,” said Deandre Davis, director of safety and security for SLPS.

Armed security wouldn’t have been a match for the shooter anyway, since he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle, said Matt Davis, president of the district’s school board.

“The assailant had a high-powered rifle,” Matt Davis said, “so much so that he could force himself into a secured building. The building is riddled with bullets. I don’t know how much firepower it would take to stop that person. You saw the police response. It was massive.”

Whether someone in the school should have been armed — and if that would have made any impact whatsoever — isn’t just a question in the aftermath of last month’s shooting. It will likely be a focus for state lawmakers when they return to the Capitol in January.

Right now school districts have the option to have armed security, including allowing teachers or administrators to carry a firearm. Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville said he’s exploring legislation to make it mandatory. 

“We need to step it up to where there’s a requirement to how you’re going to protect kids,” Brattin said.

Missouri Democrats responded to the shooting by , like establishing universal background checks for gun purchases and extreme risk protection orders — or red flag laws — allowing judges to temporarily separate at-risk individuals from their firearms.

Republicans, who hold super majorities in both the House and Senate, have largely panned the proposals as an infringement on Second Amendment rights. 

Gov. Mike Parson said tougher gun laws won’t stop gun violence. 

“You got a criminal that committed a criminal act, you know, and all the laws in the world are not going to stop those things,” . 

 This year alone, there have been across the country. 

It was inevitable that a shooting would happen in Missouri, Matt Davis said, but the only solution state legislators have offered is to “harden schools” with more guns and security.  

“There’s how many hundreds of bills, hundreds of solutions, hundreds of things where people can come together and compromise to protect their Second Amendment rights and to protect our kids in school,” Matt Davis said. “If you have the job as a politician and can write laws, and you can’t think of anything to do to stop this, then do something else.” 

School protection officers

Included in a bill passed by Missouri lawmakers in 2009 was a provision giving school officials and school boards the authority to decide if a person with a concealed carry permit could carry a gun on school campuses. 

There’s no state agency that tracks which campuses have given this authorization, according to the state Department of Public Safety. 

Four years later, Brattin said he decided to push legislation to establish a school protection officer program after hearing about school shootings and realizing “what a soft target our schools really are.” 

For some rural schools, it takes law enforcement 45 minutes to respond to a call, Brattin said, and several of the districts didn’t have access to school security guards. 

A released by the Missouri Governor’s School Safety Task Force confirmed this, finding that 40% of public school districts that responded to a survey didn’t have any school security. The survey was completed by more than half of the public school districts in Missouri.

Some teachers and administrators were already carrying firearms to respond to potential threats, so Brattin said he wanted to offer them training. 

“I wanted to develop something that had a rigorous form of training to it,” Brattin said.

Brattin’s 2013 bill didn’t pass, but one provision from his proposal made it onto a bill that was signed by the governor. It allowed the POST Commission, which facilitates training for law enforcement statewide, to determine for these teachers and administrators. 

Those standards include more than 100 hours of training in handling imminent threats, de-escalation and administering first aid. 

The next year Brattin was able to get his proposal attached as an amendment to a wide-ranging gun , which the bill sponsor, then-Sen. Will Kraus, boasted would make training for teachers and administrators who want to be school protection officers mandatory. 

The idea behind Brattin’s amendment was to take the state’s a “step further,” Kraus said at the time.

“So this actually puts an additional requirement on those individuals,” Kraus said during a 2014 floor debate. “I think it’s important that we train those individuals if they are going to carry [on campuses].”

But the 2014 law didn’t make training mandatory. 

According to Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike O’Connell, the state has a “narrow role” of facilitating the school protection officer training program. 

If school districts want to use the state’s training program, they can, but he said, “there’s nothing that says you can’t do this on your own.”

It’s up to each district to decide who becomes a school protection officer, he said, and “there’s nothing that we would have a say in.” 

As of today, 70 people in 29 school districts have opted to go through the state’s training. St. Louis is not among them. 

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education does not oversee the training or certification of either school resource officers or school protection officers, a department spokesperson said. 

Now, Brattin wants to make it mandatory for schools to allow someone to carry in the building. But it remains unclear how the state would track these individuals or if training could be required of these gun carriers. 

Brattin said there is “ambiguity” on tracking who receives training because school districts can opt to authorize people under the concealed carry law or under the school protection officer statute.  

“Nothing is stopping these schools just from authorizing a teacher to have a CCW (concealed carry weapon),” Brattin said. “That’s something that is already authorized. [The school protection officer measure] didn’t nullify that.” 

Democrats demand universal background checks

Two weeks before he entered a St. Louis high school and killed a teacher and student, 19-year-old Orlando Harris attempted to buy a gun from a licensed dealer in St. Charles. 

An FBI background check blocked the sale, according to St. Louis police officials, and he ultimately bought the weapon that he used in the shooting from a private seller. 

Background checks are not required under federal or Missouri law to legally buy a firearm from an unlicensed private seller. Democrats want Missouri to join 21 states and the District of Columbia in extending background checks beyond federal law.

“A requirement for universal background checks on all firearm purchases would have blocked this sale,” House Democratic leaders wrote in to the governor and GOP legislative leaders.

Nine days before the shooting, Harris’ mother asked police to take the gun away from him because she was concerned about his mental state. Police said state law didn’t give them the authority to take Harris’ weapon.

“The State of Missouri does not have a red flag law,” St. Louis Police Sgt. Charles Wall said in a statement to the media. “That means SLMPD officers did not have clear authority to temporarily seize the rifle when they responded to the suspect’s home when called by the suspect’s mother on 10/15/22.”

Brattin, like many Missouri Republicans, said he strongly opposes red flag laws because people could abuse the process.

He believes Harris’ family should have taken the gun away from him on their own.

“First and foremost, if the mother knew that, she could have had a family member just go and take the gun themselves from the son, instead of having to get law enforcement involved,” Brattin said.

St. Louis Police Chief Michael Sack said the mother worked with officers to give the gun to an adult who was lawfully able to possess it. 

“The mother at the time wanted it out of the house, so they facilitated that,” Sack said. “This other party had it. How [Harris] acquired it after that, we don’t know.”

St. Louis school leaders and elected officials don’t want to see more armed security. Instead, they are .

“I do not think that we need guns in our schools, period,” said Sen. Karla May, D-St. Louis, in an interview with The Independent after the shooting. “What we need to do is strengthen our state gun laws and we won’t have to worry about people having unlimited access to ammunition, and clips that shoot 20 and 40 rounds at one time.”

May said arming teachers and people in the school sends a certain message to the children. 

“And that’s not the message we want to send,” May said. “We want a safe, peaceful environment for our kids to grow up in. And we can do that by strengthening the gun laws in this state.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .