Bill could hold parents liable for a child’s school threat

Published: March 31, 2026

By: Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – The House advanced a bill Monday that would hold parents liable for fines of up to $5,000 for threats called into schools by their children.

House Bill 137, authored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, passed 71-26 amid vigorous debate. Children under the age of 14 convicted of making a school threat would face a mental examination, up to 12 months of probation or six months in juvenile detention and mandated participation in the Back on Track Youth Pilot Program.

“We want to make our schools as safe as we possibly can,” Johnson said.

The bill increases parental accountability, Johnson said, and would serve as a deterrent for both children and adults who enact threats against schools. In the case of children, the extent of a parent’s knowledge about their child’s threat to a school would be at the discretion of the courts.

Read more at KATC.