.png)
We're Spending Tomorrow's Children to Pay for Yesterday's Wrongs
"Foster children are the state's children," said Diana Boyer, managing director of research and policy at the County Welfare Directors Association of California. "We all collectively need to be doing more to support them and ensure that they have homes and families to go to."
Boyer was right. The problem is that California's policy choices are making that harder by the day.
A Well-Intentioned Law With Devastating Consequences
In 2019, California eliminated the statute of limitations on civil sexual abuse lawsuits. The intent was to provide justice for survivors — a legitimate goal. The consequences, however, were poorly thought through.
Los Angeles County reached a $4 billion settlement with claimants alleging abuse at a juvenile detention facility closed since 2001. By January of this year, the city's District Attorney had paused payouts after investigators uncovered widespread fraud in the claims pool. Meanwhile, the broader insurance market for child-serving agencies had already collapsed. The Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California stopped renewing policies entirely following one particularly large settlement, and over two dozen nonprofits that recruit and support foster families have shut down in the past two years alone, according to the California Department of Social Services.
The state stepped in with a temporary insurance subsidy — but that funding has now run out.
Maryland is walking the same path. Having lifted its statute of limitations in 2023, the state now faces billions in claims against juvenile facilities, psychiatric institutions, and foster care agencies. One state delegate acknowledged the reckoning ahead, suggesting a dedicated compensation fund — though he offered no answer on how to fund it.
A Systemic Pattern: Prioritizing the Past Over the Future
California's insurance crisis isn't an isolated policy failure. It reflects a broader and troubling pattern in public budgeting: obligations to the past consistently crowd out investment in the future.
Education spending is a clear illustration. A Reason Foundation analysis found that inflation-adjusted K-12 spending on employee benefits — pensions, health insurance, and related costs — rose 81% between 2002 and 2023, from $2,221 to $4,022 per student. In many districts, that growth is consuming budget share that would otherwise go to classroom instruction, facility maintenance, and new hires. At the federal level, the trajectory of entitlement spending raises similar long-term concerns for fiscal sustainability.
None of this is an argument against honoring commitments to retirees or delivering justice to abuse survivors. It's an argument for accounting honestly for the downstream costs of policy decisions before making them.
The Accountability Gap
The political incentives here are clear: present-day claimants and organized constituencies exert immediate pressure; future children do not vote, organize, or lobby. Plaintiffs' attorneys push hard for expanded liability windows. Retiree associations protect pension formulas. The result is a policy environment that systematically underweights the interests of those who aren't yet at the table.
The consequences of that imbalance are now arriving. Foster care agencies are closing for lack of insurability. School budgets are structurally constrained by legacy costs. And the fiscal scaffolding being built today will shape what's possible — or impossible — for the next generation.
Policymakers who care about child welfare, education access, and long-term fiscal health need to start asking these questions before passing the next well-intentioned law: Who bears the cost? Over what timeframe? And who isn't in the room when we decide?