bilateral
TopicsAbout← Feed
BySRSam Reyes·CMCal Morrow·EQEliza Quinn·DPDana Park
BREAKINGMay 25, 2026

California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints

Jason Agan, 47, a math teacher at Clifford School in Redwood City, California, has been removed from the classroom following a joint KQED and ProPublica investigation revealing he was previously fired for sexual harassment at two earlier schools but retained his teaching credentials through California's credentialing system. The investigation found that at least 67 educators in California have not had their licenses revoked after being determined by school districts to have sexually harassed students.

XLinkedInFacebookThreadsWhatsAppReddit

When a teacher fired for sexual harassment gets rehired and new complaints emerge, does the problem lie with weak personnel laws, aggressive unions blocking accountability, or an system incapable of protecting kids from repeat offenders? California just removed him again — but the question of how this happened twice remains.

Not familiar with this story? Get context →
Timing of suspension disabled preventive effect
Conservative
The Commission suspended Agan's license seven days in 2021 — after he had already been hired at another school. That's not due process; that's theater. A suspension issued after the person has already moved on protects no one.
Liberal
You're right that the timing was catastrophic, but that's actually an argument for why the current system needs mandatory revocation before rehiring, not after. The Commission delayed two years, and by then he'd already harmed another student in Sacramento. Due process doesn't require waiting until harm happens — it requires a transparent appeals window before the person can work again.
Conservative
An appeals window only works if it's genuinely fast-tracked and actually binding. California's Commission has shown it can sit on cases for two years; adding another procedural layer just gives the bureaucracy more time to shuffle papers while the next school hires the flagged teacher.
Liberal
Then the fix is to mandate decision timelines and make appeals decisive before rehiring occurs — not to pretend a seven-day suspension after-the-fact satisfies either due process or child safety.
Red-flag system provides cover without disclosure
Conservative
The database shows a red icon next to Agan's name and nothing else. Redwood City hired him anyway, possibly because the flag was meaningless. Fourteen other educators with substantiated harassment findings were rehired because no one could tell what the flag actually meant.
Liberal
I agree the opacity is indefensible — but that's a transparency fix, not a reason to skip due process. Require full disclosure of findings. Make the appeals process public and time-limited. Those changes don't require stripping someone of their license automatically; they require the Commission to actually do the job it was created to do.
Conservative
Transparency alone won't work if the default outcome is reinstatement pending appeal. You're still asking hiring districts to take on the risk of a reversal months or years down the line. Mandatory revocation with a real appeals process — decided in 60 days, not two years — changes the presumption from 'hire pending investigation' to 'don't hire pending vindication.'
Liberal
Fair point on presumption — but that's because your system needs fast timelines, not because automatic revocation is the only way to achieve them.
Quality variance in district findings undermines blanket revocation
Conservative
You say the panel's finding should be enough. But an 'independent panel' at Fairfield and a 'substantiated finding' at a Sacramento charter might reflect entirely different levels of rigor. Mandatory revocation on district-level findings could permanently end careers over rushed conclusions or politically motivated investigations.
Liberal
That's the strongest objection on your side, and I'll concede it cuts deeper than it first appears. But notice what you're not saying: you're not saying Agan's case involved rushed findings. Eleven students, an independent panel, documented corroboration at a second school — this is exactly the kind of thick evidence where due process is satisfied. Your rule would protect a hypothetical teacher; the current system is actively protecting a documented one.
Conservative
I agree Agan's case is overwhelming. The problem is designing a rule that handles Agan without creating a precedent that catches teachers with thinner evidence. If you want mandatory revocation only for 'overwhelming' cases, who decides what counts as overwhelming? You've just reinvented the Commission's discretion problem.
Liberal
Then require multiple corroborating witnesses, documented incidents across settings, and independent confirmation — set a threshold high enough that it doesn't ensnare marginal cases, and make mandatory revocation trigger only when that threshold is met.
Journalists' investigation revealed state-level accountability failure
Conservative
KQED and ProPublica had to do the Commission's job for it. They assembled public records that should have been synthesized and published by the state years ago. That's not a data problem; it's an accountability problem. The state created this apparatus and refuses to report on whether it's working.
Liberal
Agreed — the Commission should be publishing annual reports on revocation rates, appeals outcomes, and educator rehiring across districts. But that's a reporting requirement, not an argument for automatic revocation. You could mandate transparency without changing the suspension-versus-revocation question.
Conservative
Except the Commission has had years to self-report and hasn't. Mandatory revocation with mandatory public accounting creates structural pressure that transparency requirements alone cannot generate. A superintendent who overrides a revocation has to answer for it; a suspension that fails to prevent rehiring gets buried.
Liberal
Transparency plus teeth — revocation plus mandatory appeals plus mandatory disclosure — that works. But stripping transparency out and relying on revocation alone to solve accountability is just trading one form of opacity for another.
Precedent from other states demonstrates revocation effectiveness
Conservative
Multiple states reformed their credentialing systems and moved to automatic revocation. The Catholic Church abuse cases showed that institutional failure to revoke standing — not individual bad actors — is what enables repeat harm. These aren't theories; they're documented patterns.
Liberal
Those states also built appeals mechanisms first. The Church didn't fail because it lacked a revocation power; it failed because it used revocation selectively and buried the process. You're pointing to the right problem — institutional cover — but using it to justify a tool that only works if the institution is honest. Make the appeals process public, time-limited, and binding, and I'll support automatic revocation. Do it without those safeguards and you've just made it easier for a bad-faith commission to terminate careers without scrutiny.
Conservative
California has shown it won't build those safeguards voluntarily. Fourteen educators with findings are still working. A mandatory revocation creates external pressure for reform; a request for voluntary appeals mechanisms gets filed away.
Liberal
Then legislate the appeals mechanism as part of the revocation rule, not after it. The requirement isn't to choose between child safety and due process — it's to demand both, written into law at the same time.
Preventive power of suspension versus revocation as deterrent
Conservative
A seven-day suspension imposes so little cost that it functions less as a penalty than as institutional cover. Mandatory revocation creates real deterrent force — teachers face permanent loss of livelihood if they cross this line. That changes behavior.
Liberal
Deterrent only works if educators believe enforcement is certain and swift. The Commission proved it's neither — two-year delays, generic red flags, no public accounting. You could have mandatory revocation and still have a system where abusers don't believe they'll be caught. The real deterrent is transparency and speed, not severity of punishment alone.
Conservative
Revocation is what makes transparency matter. If suspension is the maximum penalty, disclosure means less because the cost to the teacher is manageable. Permanent loss of credential raises the stakes enough that districts start investigating harder and teachers think twice.
Liberal
Only if they believe the revocation will be imposed. Agan had two years and multiple incidents before any penalty at all. A threat of revocation that takes two years to materialize isn't a deterrent — it's a warning that the system moves slow enough that you can find another job before it catches up.
Conservative's hardest question
The strongest challenge to mandatory automatic revocation is the genuine risk of due process violations if district-level findings — which vary in rigor — trigger permanent career termination without independent state review. In Agan's case the evidence is overwhelming, but a blanket revocation rule applied to all 67 flagged cases might ensnare educators whose underlying findings were less thoroughly adjudicated, and conservative jurisprudence has historically been skeptical of administrative proceedings that permanently deprive individuals of occupational licenses without robust independent review.
Liberal's hardest question
The strongest challenge to automatic revocation is the uneven quality of school district investigations: a finding of 'substantiated sexual harassment' at the district level may reflect rigorous process in some districts and rushed or politically pressured conclusions in others, meaning mandatory state revocation could entrench unjust outcomes from flawed local processes. This is genuinely difficult to dismiss — and it argues for a robust, fast-tracked state-level appeals mechanism rather than against revocation itself, but that mechanism does not currently exist and building it takes time that children in classrooms right now do not have.
The Verdict
Both sides agree
Both sides agree that California's credentialing system failed to prevent Jason Agan from repeatedly accessing student contact after documented sexual harassment findings, and that this failure was preventable through policy design rather than inevitable.
The real conflict
They disagree about whether mandatory license revocation upon substantiated sexual misconduct findings would constitute adequate due process or would risk entrenching flawed district-level investigations without sufficient state-level review (conservative concern) versus whether waiting for perfect appeals procedures allows preventable harm to occur (liberal concern) — this is a genuine disagreement about acceptable risk allocation between Type I and Type II errors in child protection.
What nobody has answered
If California implemented mandatory revocation for substantiated sexual misconduct findings, what defines 'substantiated' rigorously enough to satisfy due process while remaining fast enough to prevent the two-year gaps we see in Agan's case — and who adjudicates disputed findings before a teacher is removed from the classroom, given that the Commission's own decisions have proven slow and lenient?
Sources

More debates