The main reason the Catholic Church has been sued for pedophilia is that the Catholic Church has assets to PAY if the plaintiff wins AND can not cite Sovereign Immunity to avoid having to pay for any wrong doing.
Sovereign Immunity is the doctrine that "The King can do no wrong" (and since 1776 "King" has meant the State and since 1787 that has included the Federal Government). On the other hand the "King's" agents can do wrong and be sued, but the state itself can NOT be (Unless it agrees to such lawsuits). The classic example of this is someone loses his Claim for Social Security, and sues the Social Security Administration. That is a claim against the Government and Sovereign Immunity kicks in and the case is dismissed. On the other hand if the Plaintiff had sued the Secretary of the Social Security Administration, that suit is VALID for the plaintiff is NOT suing Social Security, but the agent of the "King" in charge of Social Security.
In the Catholic Church pedophilia cases, any priest, teacher or other employee of the Church, can be held an agent of the Church, and as an agent under the control of his employer and any act by such employee is treated as an act of his principal (i.e. any act of an employee, within the employment situation, if it makes the employee liable, makes his employer liable). Notice the difference, with a private employer, the employer is liable for the acts of his employee within the employer-employee relationship, but the very same act will not make an GOVERNMENT EMPLOYER liable for the same act done by a Government Employee do to Sovereign Immunity.
Thus, while the same percentage of Public School students are sexually assaulted by their teachers, as are students at Catholic Schools, you do NOT hear of such cases for the only judgement the victims can get is against the Teacher NOT the School. It is almost impossible to collect on such Judgments, for such teachers generally lose their jobs and their income (so wage attachments is out) and most are married and you can not sell marital assets for the debts of one spouse (and on top of that most states exempt any retirements funds from attachment). In simple terms, you can sue a public school teacher, but you will not collect much money, even if the Jury comes back with a multi-million judgement.
That is NOT true of the Catholic Church, it has assets to pay for the crimes of its employees and thus can be forced to PAY for such crimes.
I bring up the Catholic Church to show WHY this proposal to waive Sovereign Immunity will NEVER PASS. Every School District and the state itself will oppose such a waiver, the cost to such schools will be tremendous. In may home state the state will waive its immunity for damages caused by bad road repairs, but limited its liability to $1 million dollars per accident (NOT per victim, per accident AND only when the accident is CLEARLY the result of bad repair to the road, NOT deterioration or even bad design UNLESS the design clearly was the cause of the accident). Do to the POTENTIAL liability of Schools and the State under such a waiver of Sovereign Immunity, I do NOT see it occurring, even Republicans do NOT want to run up their state costs of running their state.
I suspect what the State Senator wants to do is waive FEDERAL Sovereign Immunity, but only the Federal Government can do that. The States themselves can NOT waive Federal Immunity, I suspect that is what the Senator wants to do and the State can NOT do it. Once it becomes clear what he is proposing is either Unconstitutional (i.e. the state can NOT impose something on the Federal Government UNLESS the Federal Government agrees to such imposition) OR waive State and Local immunity, and everyone in the State, County and Local Government will oppose such a waiver.
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