Florida Legislature must protect schools, pay victims and end sovereign immunity

When it convenes in March, the Florida Legislature faces no greater duty than to pay what it takes to make schools safer than they were on Valentine’s Day, when a 19-year-old former student with a militarystyle assault rifle killed 17 people and wounded 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. It also faces a moral obligation to compensate the survivors and families of those whom Florida failed to protect.

The expenses will far surpass the $400 million state lawmakers cobbled together last spring, when they rashly raided trust funds and regular school accounts for immediate security needs, such as more armed officers on campus.

No one knows how much more is needed, but the certain answer is: a lot.

The draft report of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission acknowledges that some of its recommendations, such as retrofitting all schools with bullet-resistant glass, exceeds the means of county school boards.

The recommendations include letting school boards raise property taxes for security expenses — up to a half mil — without a referendum. We don’t oppose that, but it should be remembered that voters in 19 of Florida’s 67 counties recently passed referendums to raise sales and/or property taxes for school safety and teacher pay raises.

The proposed increase also must be viewed in light of the Legislature’s history of pitching responsibilities to local school boards so that it can boast of keeping state taxes low. That temptation will be especially rampant in Tallahassee this spring, given the just-approved constitutional amendment that requires a supermajority vote in each house to raise any tax.

The Stoneman Douglas commission also calls for extensive state oversight of school safety. It’s ironic that if approved, the official who’d be in charge of doing that — and, presumably, for extracting more money from the Legislature — would be the same politician who muscled the supermajority amendment onto the ballot. That is former House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who has been appointed the next commissioner of education despite his lack of relevant qualifications. His job will be more difficult because of what he did to hobble state government.

If anything deserves a supermajority vote, it’s the overdue bill for making Florida schools safer and for compensating the victims of Parkland.

A major component of the state’s failure to protect was the Legislature’s servitude to the gun lobby. Assault weapons, such as the one that Nikolas Cruz took to Stoneman Douglas with deadly effect, belong in no hands but those of law enforcement and the military.

In the aftermath of Parkland, the Legislature finally bucked the National Rifle Association by making 21 the minimum purchase age for all rifles, not just handguns. But military-style assault weapons are still available to everyone else. That’s one reason why the Stoneman Douglas commission says school resource officers should now have rifles close at hand. A handgun is no match for an AR-15.

The commission’s report, to be sent to the Legislature next month, makes dozens of recommendations, many of them inexpensive and some so obvious that it’s shocking they haven’t already been implemented.

It has been known for years that every classroom in America should have a wellmarked and unobstructed secure corner, out of sight from the hallways, but a number of Stoneman Douglas classrooms didn’t have them. Children died on that account.

“The reality,” the commission warns, “is that another active shooter incident will occur.” It would be folly to assume otherwise. But our schools can be made safer than they are.

Victim compensation is an issue the Legislature didn’t task to the Stoneman Douglas Commission, but it is as unavoidable as safety. The public owes an enormous debt to the families of the 14 slain students and three staff members, to those who survived their injuries and to those struggling with trauma from the ordeal.

Lawsuits are being filed. Heavy damages are likely to be awarded, far above Florida’s miserly sovereign immunity limits —

$200,000 for a single claimant and

$300,000 for all claims from a single incident. In the context of Parkland, that’s ludicrous.

A starting point is HB 123, filed Wednesday by Rep. Kristin Jacobs, D-Coconut Creek, establishing a Parkland compensation trust fund with an initial appropriation of $110 million. The Department of Education would administer the fund, but the bill offers no guidance on how to do it or whether the state would waive its immunity limits. If not waived, special legislation would still be needed to pay each judgment.

Even if the legislation is successful, the state should not try to pressure Parkland families into accepting settlements for the sake of avoiding trials. Many details of what went wrong remain hidden by laws intended to protect the privacy of student education and health records. They’re itemized in parts of the commission report that only authorized people may see. Litigation can pierce that secrecy and help hold government accountable.

It is time for the Legislature to reconsider the entirety of sovereign immunity, an archaic concept rooted in the theory that the king can do no wrong.

The Legislature repealed it in 1969, but let it return under pressure from school boards and their insurance companies. Some had threatened to close their playgrounds. A limited waiver with those ridiculously low ceilings was the compromise.

Courts frequently award larger judgments, but they can only be collected by lobbying the Legislature to pass “claims bills.” The Stoneman Douglas victims were scarcely in their graves before the grieving families were warned by the school district’s insurance company that any lawsuits would face that future. The notices failed to reveal that the Broward school district reportedly has excess insurance coverage worth $2.1 million per year. Even that is grossly inadequate in the context of Parkland.

The Legislature rarely passes claims bills and when it does, it takes years, if not decades. As a result, government agencies rarely face financial consequences for bad behavior. Today’s set-up encourages them — and their insurance companies — to deny, deny, deny, and stall, stall, stall.

It also makes it hard for victims to find an attorney, who often invest more time and expense than they are likely to recoup. The Legislature seeks to limit such attorney fees. The agencies’ lawyers, meanwhile, are financed without limit by the taxpayers.

Sovereign immunity doesn’t protect the state in federal courts, but the barriers to success there are extremely high. U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom dismissed a Parkland lawsuit against the Broward County Sheriff ’s Office last week, saying it had no constitutional duty to protect the students because they weren’t in custody.

We think her ruling overlooks an important point: school attendance is compulsory in Florida from age 6 to 16. Her basic premise was in line, however, with Supreme Court rulings since 1989.

Such cases illustrate why someone once defined “law” as the illegitimate offspring of justice.

Still, bad laws can be made more just. Florida should repeal sovereign immunity. It should consider establishing a court of claims like the federal government’s. At a minimum, it ought to require school boards and other agencies, including law enforcement, to purchase ample insurance that would be exempt from sovereign immunity limits. Legislation along that line was introduced in the Florida Legislature last January by Rep. Evan Jenne and Sen. Kevin Rader, Broward Democrats. Despite Parkland, it didn’t get a single committee hearing in either house.

There must be no more such indifference. There can be no more excuses — at any level of government.