Maryland Supreme Court upholds law ending statute of limitations on child sex abuse lawsuits

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CNA Staff, Feb 7, 2025 / 13:30 pm (CNA).

The Maryland Supreme Court this week found that the state Child Victims Act (CVA) of 2023 did not violate the state constitution, allowing victims to file civil lawsuits against alleged abusers — including Catholic officials — regardless of when the abuse occurred. 

The high court this week upheld the 2023 law, which had abolished a 20-year statute of limitations for civil child abuse suits, ruling against three plaintiffs including the archbishop of Washington, D.C. 

The 2023 law, which passed the state Legislature that year with near-unanimous support and was signed by state Gov. Wes Moore, effectively repealed a “statute of repose” that had been established in 2017 and that limited the timeline for filing child abuse claims in the state to 20 years after the alleged victim became an adult. 

A statute of repose is similar to a statute of limitations, though it is usually stricter in enforcing a timeline by which individuals can bring lawsuits.

The plaintiffs had argued at the high court that the statute of repose established by the 2017 law had created a right to be “free of liability,” shielding them from lawsuits subsequently brought under the 2023 statute.

The state Supreme Court, however, ruled that the 2017 law established a statute of limitations rather than repose, and thus the law “did not give rise to a vested right to be free of liability” after the 2023 law repealed the statute.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of the CVA. In a dissent, Justice Jonathan Biran said the court’s majority “fails to interpret the 2017 act as the General Assembly wrote it.” 

“It is difficult to imagine how the General Assembly could more plainly state that [the law established] a statute of repose,” Biran said, pointing to the explicit use of the term in the law. 

The high court’s Feb. 3 ruling incorporated three separate cases brought by plaintiffs who had been sued for abuse under the 2023 law and were challenging its constitutionality. 

Among the plaintiffs was the archbishop of Washington, who was sued in Prince George’s County in 2024 “for alleged sexual and emotional abuse by clergy.”

The other plaintiffs were the Harford County Board of Education and the Annapolis-based Key School.