California lawmakers unanimously passed AB 2365 in late August, a bill that adds credential suspension or revocation as penalties for school administrators who fail to verify whether job applicants were reported for misconduct at previous employers. The measure, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, is intended to enforce background-check mandates that have been in effect since 2025 but carried no clear consequences for noncompliance.
What the bill does
AB 2365 specifies that the state's Commission on Teacher Credentialing may discipline both teachers and administrators who fail to comply with existing requirements to check applicants' prior employment history for reports of egregious misconduct. Penalties include public reprimands, credential suspension, or credential revocation. The bill adds Section 44052.5 to the Education Code, which by July 1, 2027, requires the commission to maintain a section in the statewide data system identifying whether it has received reports of possible misconduct against certificated employees. Schools would check this system before hiring applicants and then request detailed information from the reporting entities.
The bill is dramatically different from Muratsuchi's original June proposal, which would have created a searchable database allowing schools to see if applicants had been reported to the state after being fired or resigning over misconduct claims. That database was scrapped after opposition from the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. The Association of California School Administrators, which originally sponsored the bill, withdrew its sponsorship after the database provision was dropped.
Existing laws and enforcement gap
The background-check mandates date to AB 2534, passed in 2024 and effective 2025, which requires certificated job applicants to disclose all prior education employers and requires districts to ask each previous employer whether the applicant was reported for credible or substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct. SB 848, effective January 1, 2026, extended the requirement to private school applicants and created a separate misconduct database for school support staff such as bus drivers and custodians, set to launch by July 1, 2027. That database explicitly excludes public school teachers.
Neither law included penalties for noncompliance, a gap that AB 2365 was designed to fill. Muratsuchi said the bill makes sure school districts prioritize background checks by putting in consequences for failing to do so, according to ProPublica.
Evidence of the problem
According to the KQED-ProPublica investigation, at least 14 of those educators were hired by new schools, and at least 12 still worked in education as of the investigation's publication. The state's disciplinary process typically takes one year, a window during which educators reported for misconduct can apply for and accept new positions before any discipline appears in the public credentialing database. The database maintained by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing shows a red-flag indicator when a credential holder has been disciplined but does not explain the reason for the sanction or link to supporting documents.
Precedent from the support staff database
SB 848, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2025, created a statewide misconduct database for non-certificated school support staff with substantiated claims of egregious misconduct, modeled alongside the teacher background-check mandates. It passed despite union opposition but excluded public school teachers. That database is contingent upon an appropriation in the state Budget Act. Muratsuchi's original bill sought to extend a similar system to teachers, but the final version retreated to penalties for administrators who fail to vet applicants through employer-to-employer inquiries.
Next steps
Governor Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto AB 2365. If signed, the bill will require the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to implement the new data-sharing system by July 1, 2027, with schools required to check the system before hiring certificated applicants starting that date.