Maryland Supreme Court hears arguments on child sex abuse lawsuits

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland — The Maryland Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on the constitutionality of a law from 2023 which ended the statute of limitations on state child sex abuse lawsuits after a report that revealed widespread abuses within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The discussions, which lasted several hours and often deviated into highly technical legal jargon, largely focused on the intent of the Maryland Legislature when it passed an earlier law in 2017 that allowed people in Maryland who were sexually abused as children to file lawsuits until age 38.

Teresa Lancaster, an abuse survivor and advocate for others, said she was optimistic after what she heard in court.

“These crimes have hurt many, many people. We deserve our day in court. We deserve justice, and I’m very, very excited about what I heard today,” Lancaster said outside the courthouse.

A ruling from the state’s highest court is expected in the coming months.

Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, signed the Child Victims Act last year, less than a week after the state’s attorney general released a report documenting widespread clergy abuse in Baltimore that spanned 80 years and accused church leaders of a decades-long cover-up.

The nearly 500-page report detailed more than 150 Catholic priests and others affiliated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore who abused more than 600 children. State investigators began their work in 2019.

A few days before the new law was to come into effect on October 1, the archdiocese bankruptcy filed to protect its assets from an expected flood of lawsuits. That means claims filed against the archdiocese will be referred to bankruptcy court, but other institutions such as Catholic schools and individual parishes can still be sued directly.

While the court’s ruling will have far-reaching implications for child sexual abuse cases in Maryland, oral arguments Tuesday focused on a technical issue involving the previous 2017 change to the law that set the age limit at 38.

The question is whether a provision in the 2017 legislation is drafted in such a way as to permanently shield certain defendants from liability. To answer that question, the court will probably have to decide whether the provision should be regarded as a limitation period or a so-called prescription period.

Lawyers for defendants facing liability claims under the new law argue that it is a statute of limitations that they say cannot be modified because it covers an “acquired right to be free from liability.”

“In general, a legislature may repeal existing laws and replace them with new ones. But it may not do so in a manner that destroys the substantive rights acquired under the terms of the existing law,” the Archdiocese of Washington wrote in a letter filed ahead of oral arguments.

David Lorenz, director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests in Maryland, said the archdiocese should be ashamed of itself for “treating survivors as a product with limited liability.”

“And that’s what they’re doing, hiding behind the lull,” Lorenz said after the trial. “They should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for it, and then in one minute they say, ‘We’re going to do everything we can for survivors and help them get through this.’ They’re doing nothing, nothing, except driving survivors harder and harder underground, and it’s time for survivors to come forward and start healing.”

Attorneys representing Maryland businesses, insurance companies and civil defense attorneys raised concerns in a letter about issues surrounding witness statements and data retention in cases filed decades after the fact.

But the most substantive arguments presented before the court on Tuesday concerned the legislature’s intentions.

Advocates for abuse victims argued that when the Maryland General Assembly passed the 2017 law, lawmakers did not intend to prevent future legislators from reconsidering the issue and changing the time limits for civil lawsuits. The law may have included the term “repose,” but that does not mean the legislature intended to make it permanent, advocates argued.

“There is a debate between that label — statute of repose — and the actual operational function of the law,” attorney Catherine Stetson told the court’s seven-justice panel, arguing that the court should consider the structure, operation and full text of the statute rather than looking at “a word in a vacuum.”

“Child abuse is a scourge on society, and it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with what they have suffered,” the victims’ attorneys wrote in a letter. “It is difficult to imagine a law more rationally related to a legitimate government interest than this one.”

Some justices expressed skepticism about whether state legislatures in 2017 deliberately selected language intended to limit the powers of their successors.

“If it had that meaning, wouldn’t you expect there to be more explanation in the legislative record?” Chief Justice Matthew Fader asked. “Wouldn’t that have turned up somewhere?”

Lawyers for the Archdiocese of Washington and the Key School, a small private school in Annapolis, argued that the Legislature was ambiguous in its language.

“The General Assembly meant exactly what it said,” attorney Sean Gugerty told the court. “The plain language of the statute is what drives the analysis.”

Judge Brynja Booth pointed out that interpretation of the law is not always clear-cut.

“We don’t often look beyond a label … and look at the characteristics to determine what it actually means,” she said.