California reopened the courthouse doors on January 1, 2026. Adult survivors of sexual assault whose civil claims had already run out of time now have a two-year window to file, and it closes on December 31, 2027.
The law behind it is Assembly Bill 250, the Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act, signed by Governor Newsom in October 2025. It amended California Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16 to revive claims that the filing deadline had already closed off.
One of the hardest parts of this work is hearing how long some survivors carried what happened before they felt able to say it out loud. There is no standard timeline for trauma. Some people come forward within days. Others spend years processing it, worried about retaliation, worried they will not be believed, or trying to move on by trying to forget.
Filing deadlines have not always accounted for that. AB 250 changes the deadline for a specific group of survivors, and the eligibility rules are narrower than most coverage of the law suggests. Below is what the statute actually requires.
What is the statute of limitations for sexual assault in California?
A statute of limitations is the legal deadline for filing a lawsuit. For an adult survivor of sexual assault in California, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16 sets two deadlines and gives you whichever one is later.
The 10-year rule and the 3-year discovery rule
- Ten years from the date of the last act, attempted act, or assault with intent to commit an act of sexual assault against you.
- Three years from the date you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, that an injury or illness resulted from the assault.
That second deadline is the discovery rule, and it matters more than people expect. Survivors often do not connect anxiety, depression, a health problem, or a pattern in their relationships back to an assault until years later, sometimes in therapy. The clock on that three-year deadline starts when the connection is made, not when the assault happened.
Once both deadlines pass, the claim is time-barred. A court will dismiss it no matter how strong the evidence is. That is the situation AB 250 was written to address.
One more thing worth knowing: you do not need a criminal case for any of this. Section 340.16 says outright that a criminal prosecution does not have to have been brought, and if one was brought, it does not have to have ended in a conviction. A civil claim stands on its own.
What AB 250 changed on January 1, 2026
AB 250 created a revival window. A revival window is a limited stretch of time during which the Legislature allows expired claims to be filed anyway, as though the deadline had not run.
The revival window: January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2027
Under the new subdivision (e) of section 340.16, a claim qualifies if the assault happened on or after your 18th birthday and the claim would have been barred before January 1, 2026 solely because the statute of limitations had expired. Cases already pending in court on January 1, 2026 can continue. Everything else has to be filed between January 1, 2026 and December 31, 2027.
This is not a permanent extension. The ten-year and three-year rules still govern claims going forward. AB 250 is a door that opens once and then closes again at the end of 2027.
Who qualifies under AB 250?
Eligibility depends on who you are suing. The statute sets a different test for claims against a company or institution than it sets for claims against the person who assaulted you, and most summaries of AB 250 skip past that difference.
Suing a company, employer, or institution requires a cover-up
To revive a claim against an entity, the statute requires you to allege two things. First, that one or more entities or persons, including the perpetrator, are legally responsible for damages arising out of the assault. Second, that an entity, or its officers, directors, representatives, employees, or agents, engaged in a cover-up or attempted a cover-up of a previous instance or allegation of sexual assault by that same perpetrator.
Read that second requirement closely. The cover-up has to relate to an earlier report about the same person, not only to what happened to you. The practical question becomes whether someone reported this person before you did, and what the organization did with that report.
The statute defines a cover-up as a concerted effort to hide evidence relating to a sexual assault that either pushes people to stay silent or keeps information from becoming public or reaching the plaintiff. It names nondisclosure agreements and confidentiality agreements as examples. A quiet settlement with an earlier complainant, a personnel file that was scrubbed, an internal investigation that went nowhere and was never disclosed: those are the patterns the language is aimed at.
If there were several organizations involved and you can only show a cover-up by one of them, that does not sink the rest of your case. The statute says failing to allege a cover-up as to one entity does not affect your claims against any other entity or person, including the perpetrator.
Suing the person who assaulted you
The test here is lighter. To revive a claim against the perpetrator, the statute asks you to allege that you were sexually assaulted and that one or more entities or persons, including the perpetrator, are legally responsible for damages arising out of the assault. The separate cover-up requirement written into the entity paragraph does not appear in this one.
How courts will read that gap is still being worked out. AB 250 took effect in 2026 and there is not much case law yet. It is worth raising with an attorney rather than assuming your claim is closed.
Wrongful termination and harassment claims can come back with it
This part gets almost no attention and it changes the value of a lot of workplace cases. Subdivision (e) revives related claims arising out of the same sexual assault, and it names wrongful termination and sexual harassment specifically.
So if you were assaulted by a supervisor, reported it, and were pushed out of the job afterward, the employment claims that expired alongside the assault claim may be back on the table inside the same window. Bring the whole history to your consultation, not just the assault itself.
What the window does not cover
Three categories are excluded outright:
- A claim already litigated to finality in court before January 1, 2026.
- A claim settled by a written agreement between the parties before January 1, 2026.
- Any claim against a public entity, including direct, derivative, and vicarious liability claims.
That third exclusion catches more people than they expect. A public entity means a government body: a public school district, a public university, a city, a county, a state agency. If the assault happened at a public high school, AB 250 does not reopen a claim against the district. If it happened at a private school, a church, a nonprofit, a hospital, or a company, the window may apply. The statute also says a public entity has no duty to indemnify a perpetrator, so you cannot reach public funds by suing the individual instead.
AB 250 also does not lower what you have to prove. The statute states plainly that it does not alter the ordinary burden of proof. It reopens the deadline. Nothing else.
AB 250, AB 2777, and AB 218: which California law applies to you?
California has passed several of these laws in the last few years and they cover different survivors. Before you assume AB 250 is your route, check whether one of the others already covers you, because one of them has an earlier deadline and an easier test.
| Law | Who it covers | Cover-up required? | Deadline to file |
|---|---|---|---|
| AB 218 (CCP 340.1) |
Assault that happened before your 18th birthday | No | Until you turn 40, or 5 years from discovery, whichever is later. Its separate revival window closed at the end of 2022. |
| AB 2777 (CCP 340.16(b)(3)) |
Adults, where the conduct happened on or after January 1, 2009 | No | December 31, 2026 |
| AB 250 (CCP 340.16(e)) |
Adults, where the claim was already barred before January 1, 2026 | Yes, for claims against an entity | December 31, 2027 |
The middle row is the one people miss. If your assault happened on or after January 1, 2009, section 340.16(b)(3) may already revive your claim with no cover-up allegation required at all. That is a simpler path than AB 250. It also closes a full year earlier, on December 31, 2026, so if you are in that group you have less time than the AB 250 headlines suggest.
If the assault happened when you were a child, you are in a different statute altogether. We cover that one on our page about California child sexual abuse law and AB 218.
The scale of AB 218 claims against California institutions
Los Angeles County reported $4.828 billion in AB 218 childhood sexual assault settlements in its annual financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025. The same report attributes an increase of about $956 million in litigation and self-insurance liabilities primarily to Child Victims Act cases. Both figures come from the county Auditor-Controller. They appear in the part of the report called Management’s Discussion and Analysis, which is unaudited.
School districts carry a share too. In January 2025, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) reported to the Legislature on what AB 218 has meant for California local educational agencies. FCMAT put the value of those claims at an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion. It calls that the estimated aggregate claim value, not the amount a local public agency may be responsible for after applicable insurance. The estimate came from interviews with public entity risk pools, and FCMAT says a comprehensive analysis of claims is not available.
AB 218 reaches public entities. AB 250 does not. Together those figures show the scale of institutional exposure a revival window creates once the Legislature opens one.
What filing under the revival window looks like
A civil case is not a criminal case. You are not asking the state to prosecute anyone, and you are not required to have gone to the police. You are asking a court to hold a person or an organization financially responsible for the harm.
What helps
- Anything that documents the timeline: texts, emails, journals, calendar entries, HR complaints, police reports if one exists.
- Names of anyone you told at the time, even if you only told them part of it.
- Medical or therapy records, which often establish when you connected the injury to the assault.
- For an entity claim, anything suggesting earlier complaints about the same person: rumors, a quiet departure, another employee who left, a settlement people knew about.
If you do not have most of that, it does not end the conversation. Much of the evidence in these cases sits inside the organization and comes out in discovery, which is the formal exchange of documents and testimony after a case is filed.
Privacy and your name in the record
This is usually the first question survivors ask, and it should be. California courts allow plaintiffs in sexual assault cases to file under a pseudonym such as Jane Doe or John Doe in appropriate circumstances, though it takes a request to the court and it is not automatic. Ask about it at your first consultation so you know where you stand before anything is filed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the look-back period for sexual assault in California?
Two are open right now. Under AB 250, adult survivors whose claims were barred before January 1, 2026 can file between January 1, 2026 and December 31, 2027. Under AB 2777, adults whose assault happened on or after January 1, 2009 can file until December 31, 2026.
Can I still file if the assault happened many years ago?
Possibly. That is exactly who AB 250 was written for. The age of the assault matters less than three other things: whether you were 18 or older when it happened, whether the claim was already barred before January 1, 2026, and whether an organization covered up an earlier allegation about the same person.
Does AB 250 apply to childhood sexual abuse?
No. AB 250 covers assaults that happened on or after your 18th birthday. Childhood sexual abuse claims fall under Code of Civil Procedure section 340.1, which lets survivors file until they turn 40, or within five years of discovering the injury, whichever is later.
Do I need a criminal conviction to sue?
No. Section 340.16 states that no criminal prosecution needs to have been brought, and that if one was brought, it does not need to have ended in a conviction. Many survivors never reported to police at all and still have a viable civil claim.
Can I sue my employer under AB 250?
Yes, if the cover-up requirement is met. A private employer is an entity under the statute, so you would need to allege that the employer or its officers, employees, or agents covered up or tried to cover up an earlier allegation of sexual assault by the same person. Related wrongful termination and harassment claims arising from the assault are revived along with it.
What if the assault happened at a public school or a government job?
AB 250 excludes public entities, so it will not revive a claim against a school district, public university, city, county, or state agency. It may still reach a private contractor or an individual involved. This is worth a conversation with an attorney, because who counts as a public entity is not always obvious from the outside.
How much does it cost to talk to a lawyer about this?
Nothing. Consultations at our firm are free, and sexual abuse cases are handled on contingency, which means you owe no fee unless we recover money for you.
Talk to a California sexual abuse attorney
The civil justice system cannot undo what happened. It can give you a place to be heard, a record that your experience was real, and a way to hold people and institutions accountable on your own terms and in your own time.
If you were sexually assaulted as an adult and were told, or assumed, that too much time had passed, AB 250 may have changed that answer. The window closes December 31, 2027, and building an institutional case takes time, so the earlier you ask the question the more room there is to work.
Our California sexual abuse lawyers can tell you which window applies to your situation and whether your claim is one of the ones that came back. Call 833-Get-Gomez or request a free consultation.
About the author. Madison Henry is a trial attorney with Gomez Trial Attorneys in San Diego, where her practice focuses on representing survivors of sexual abuse.
This article is general information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines in these cases turn on facts specific to your situation. Talk to an attorney about yours.
