All Roll Calls
Yes: 148 • No: 0
LouisianaSB 412025 Regular SessionSenateWALLET
CHILDREN: Provides relative to child welfare. (See Act) (EN INCREASE GF EX See Note)
Sponsored By: Regina Barrow (Democratic)
Signed by Governor
Health and Welfare
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
19 provisions identified: 7 benefits, 6 costs, 6 mixed.
Families can recover school abuse costs
Parents or guardians can seek damages when their child suffers sexual abuse in a school setting. Damages can cover related medical and behavioral health expenses. Tuition reimbursement is available if the child is removed from the school. Other damages allowed by law are also available; this provision states no dollar cap or award formula.
Pay safeguards for school workers
Tenured Louisiana public school teachers and permanent public school bus operators receive limits on unpaid administrative leave. Employers may use unpaid administrative leave only for arrests involving specified offenses or substantiated abuse or neglect registry complaints. Outside those grounds, these workers cannot be placed on administrative leave without pay.
Registry bars for youth facility workers
Covered juvenile detention facilities cannot employ owners, operators, employees, or volunteers listed for substantiated child abuse or neglect. This applies to facilities licensed by, or seeking a license from, the Office of Juvenile Justice. Similar employment bars cover owners, operators, employees, applicants, and volunteers at specialized providers licensed or seeking licensure through child welfare officials. People subject to the juvenile-facility finding retain an administrative appeal route.
Registry records block school employment
Registry records dated August 1, 2018, onward bar covered hiring by local public school boards and nonpublic schools or systems. Covered jobs include teachers, administrators, substitutes, bus operators, janitors, and temporary, part-time, or permanent school employees. Registry checks apply to covered school applicants hired on or after August 1, 2025. Local public school boards must dismiss covered employees whose names are recorded on or after August 1, 2025.
Registry screening for child welfare jobs
Louisiana child welfare officials must check the central registry before hiring for covered child-related jobs. Jobs include abuse investigations, authority over children, direct care, and licensing surveys. Searches cover names recorded after January 1, 2010, and hiring requires no qualifying substantiated abuse or neglect entry. People whose names are or were entered retain administrative appeal rights. Licensed therapeutic group homes must also request registry information about covered people before employment.
School workers face reporting penalties
School workers listed on the central registry on or after August 1, 2025, must report that listing. Notice to the employer and department is due within two business days, excluding weekends and holidays. Administrators, teachers, and substitute teachers who fail to report face up to $1,000 in fines or one year in prison. Other school employees face up to $500 or six months in prison. Related school reporting rules replace 'justified' complaints with substantiated registry complaints, and charter employees must follow public-school rules for specified arrests.
Tighter child-care ownership and work limits
Specified convictions, pleas, and registry records bar covered provider, employee, or resident roles in registered family and in-home child care. Providers pay for required background checks. Listed convictions or pleas, or Louisiana central-registry records dated August 1, 2018, onward, also bar early learning center ownership or operation. They also bar governance roles in covered centers, residential homes, and family or in-home child-care residences. Louisiana substantiated abuse or neglect registry records, or another state's child-abuse registry listing, bar owning, running, or working at licensed early learning centers.
Changed conviction rules for education jobs
After a successful appeal, the state education board may grant credentials for felonies outside the barred-offense list. The appeal process has a five-year waiting period; for application fraud or state-assessment cheating findings, it starts upon notice of the board's determination. Other appeal requirements still apply. The employment offense list adds R.S. 14:46.2 through 14:46.4 and 14:93.5, and removes R.S. 14:78 and 14:78.1. The law also removes R.S. 46:51.2 and R.S. 1441.13 from the list of governing provisions.
More prekindergarten programs need licenses
Nonpublic prekindergarten programs generally need an early learning center license and must apply by January 1, 2026. Listed exemptions include public-school-attached prekindergarten, qualifying Montessori schools, camps, registered family day-care homes, and free care. Kindergarten and higher grades also remain exempt from this licensing requirement. All prekindergarten programs must meet minimum child safety and welfare standards, even when exempt from licensing.
Parents get more child-care safety information
Parents with children enrolled or applying at covered providers can request information about substantiated abuse, neglect, or exploitation findings. After investigating, child welfare officials may share those findings and may disclose them when needed for protective action. The education department must post specified violations involving supervision, background checks, registry forms, staffing ratios, vehicle checks, and critical-incident reporting. By August 1 annually, it must send programs a Charlie's Law safety guide with a complaint phone number. Early learning centers and public schools with prekindergarten must give the guide to parents at the school year's start; electronic delivery is allowed.
School employees avoid child welfare search fees
Louisiana's Department of Children and Family Services can charge up to $25 for an authorized child abuse registry search. The law waives this fee for school employee searches conducted under R.S. 17:15.
Child deaths trigger prompt oversight notice
Child welfare officials must notify the state child ombudsman after learning that a previously reported child has died. Notice is due within three business days after officials receive the death information. The prior report must concern alleged abuse or neglect.
Faster school abuse responses for families
Covered abuse at school, on school grounds, in school vehicles, or at school-sponsored activities requires immediate parent and police notice. All involved children's parents must be notified and interviewed, and police must begin investigating within 48 hours. Child-on-child sexual abuse also requires a state assessment of both families' safety and well-being. For sexual-abuse reports from police, child welfare staff may first interview families to identify needs and community resources. An immediate substantial risk of harm requires a prompt intensive investigation.
Training standards for children's court advocates
Louisiana Court-Appointed Special Advocate programs must follow Louisiana CASA Association standards to qualify under the Children's Code. Volunteers must receive training under those standards and work under a qualifying program's supervision.
Schools face fines for unsafe hiring
The state education board may fine school authorities that knowingly skip criminal-record requests or registry verification when hiring. Fines also apply to knowingly hiring someone with a listed conviction or registry record. The fine equals the average annual Louisiana public school teacher compensation, including salary and benefits. A final judgment through the required administrative hearing process must come before the fine.
Child welfare records get disclosure limits
Child death review panels cannot reference department information from inconclusive or unsubstantiated reports in their documents. One statutory request process permits only confirmation that a substantiated report exists, not other record details. In custody cases where potentially relevant records are raised, child protection staff must tell judges about substantiated reports. Judges may order information released only when necessary to the case; unsubstantiated records remain sealed except for legally allowed access. A caregiver's written request can permit limited employer disclosure of substantiated allegations for work supervising the employer's children or dependents; federally protected information stays private.
Annual abuse training for child-care workers
Teaching and child-care providers must complete the state's online mandatory-reporter course each year between June 1 and August 31. Employers must retain training records and report each provider's completion status to the Louisiana Department of Education by September 30. The department must publish completion rates for each employer online. Required training submissions begin with the 2026–2027 school year.
Broader child abuse reporting duties
Mandatory reporters now expressly include foster parents, probation officers, covered child-care and residential staff, and state workers who supervise or discipline children. The caretaker definition includes staff at licensed residential or treatment facilities, but excludes specified child-care staff, unlicensed providers, and some household adults. Reports go to child welfare officials or police based on the alleged abuser's role; reporting to both is allowed. Receiving agencies must accept and act on reports, with required cross-agency referrals due within 24 hours. Child welfare officials must make their required police referrals by telephone.
Stronger staffing safeguards for young children
Early learning centers and prekindergarten programs must meet minimum safety standards by October 1, 2025; charter schools lose their exemption. More than four children require at least two staff, except when an extenuating circumstance temporarily prevents compliance. Maximum children per staff member are five under age one, seven at age one, and 10 at age two. Limits are 13 at age three, 15 at age four, and 19 at age five. Mixed-age groups may average ratios only without children under two; otherwise, the youngest child's age controls. Only staff directly caring for children count, and staff cannot count toward two groups at once. Programs must provide needed extra medical-care staffing, continuous supervision, restroom safeguards, and prompt cleaning and changing after toileting accidents. Shared school facilities built after January 1, 2026, need separate designated restrooms for younger children.
Sponsors & Cosponsors
Sponsor
Regina Barrow
Democratic • Senate
Cosponsors
Beth Mizell
Republican • Senate
Roy Daryl Adams
Democratic • House
Edward J. Price
Democratic • Senate
Eddie J. Lambert
Republican • Senate
Gary Carter
Democratic • Senate
Gerald Boudreaux
Democratic • Senate
Glen Womack
Republican • Senate
Jay Luneau
Democratic • Senate
Jeremy Stine
Republican • Senate
Joseph Bouie
Affiliation unavailable
Katrina R. Jackson-Andrews
Democratic • Senate
Larry Selders
Affiliation unavailable
Michael Robert Bayham Jr.
Republican • House
Patrick Connick
Republican • Senate
Patrick McMath
Republican • Senate
Sam Jenkins
Democratic • Senate
Stephanie H. Berault
Republican • House
Stewart Cathey Jr.
Republican • Senate
Valarie Hodges
Republican • Senate
Roll Call Votes
House vote • 6/8/2025
Read third time by title, amended, roll called on final passage, yeas 96, nays 0. Finally passed, ordered to the Senate.
Yes: 96 • No: 0
House vote • 6/3/2025
Reported with amendments
Yes: 14 • No: 0
Senate vote • 5/14/2025
Senate floor amendments read and adopted. Read by title and passed by a vote of 38 yeas and 0 nays; ordered re-reengrossed and sent to the House. Motion to reconsider tabled.
Yes: 38 • No: 0
Actions Timeline
Signed by the Governor. Becomes Act No. 409.
6/20/2025SenateEffective date 8/1/2025.
6/20/2025SenateEnrolled. Signed by the President of the Senate.
6/11/2025SenateSigned by the Speaker of the House.
6/11/2025HouseSent to the Governor by the Secretary of the Senate.
6/11/2025SenateRead third time by title, amended, roll called on final passage, yeas 96, nays 0. Finally passed, ordered to the Senate.
6/8/2025HouseReceived from the House with amendments.
6/8/2025SenateRead by title, amended, recommitted to the Committee on Appropriations.
6/4/2025HouseDischarged from the Committee on Appropriations.
6/4/2025HouseRead by title, passed to 3rd reading.
6/4/2025HouseScheduled for floor debate on 06/08/2025.
6/4/2025HouseReported with amendments (14-0). To be recommitted to the Committee on Appropriations.
6/3/2025HouseRead by title, under the rules, referred to the Committee on Health and Welfare.
5/20/2025HouseReceived in the House from the Senate, read by title, lies over under the rules.
5/19/2025HouseSenate floor amendments read and adopted. Read by title and passed by a vote of 38 yeas and 0 nays; ordered re-reengrossed and sent to the House. Motion to reconsider tabled.
5/14/2025SenateRead by title; Committee amendments read and adopted. Ordered reengrossed and passed to third reading and final passage.
5/13/2025SenateRules suspended. Reported with amendments.
5/12/2025SenateRead by title. Committee amendments read and adopted; ordered engrossed and recommitted to the Committee on Finance.
4/28/2025SenateReported with amendments.
4/23/2025SenateIntroduced in the Senate; read by title. Rules suspended. Read second time and referred to the Committee on Health and Welfare.
4/14/2025SenatePrefiled and under the rules provisionally referred to the Committee on Health and Welfare.
3/31/2025Senate
Bill Text
Enacted
Engrossed
Enrolled
Introduced
Reengrossed
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