Maryland Supreme Court hears challenges to Child Victims Act

The Maryland Supreme Court building. File Photo by Bennett Leckrone.

The Supreme Court of Maryland Tuesday heard arguments on three challenges to a year-old state law that blew open the door for survivors of child sexual abuse to sue state and private intuitions that failed to protect them.

The challenges to the Maryland Child Victims Act came from the Annapolis-based Key School, the Board of Education of Harford County, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, D.C. The three challenges seek to overturn the 2023 law on constitutional grounds, or severely limit its ability to allow lawsuits based on allegations that are, in some cases, decades old.

Advocates and survivors of abuse hailed the passage last year of the act. The bill , signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore, took effect in October. Since then, numerous lawsuits have been filed against religious organizations including the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as well as state and local governmental institutions.

During more than three hours of oral arguments , the justices repeatedly asked about the ability of the General Assembly to pass a law that allowed for lawsuits on older allegations. They also asked if a 2017 law that preceded the Child Victims Act barred future legislatures from revisiting the issue.

Plaintiffs in the three lawsuits received help in Tuesday’s appeal from the Office of the Attorney General. The state’s top lawyer filed an amicus brief arguing that the 2023 law was constitutional and that there was no vested right protecting institutions from lawsuits on older allegations.

All three cases before the state’s highest court stem from separate lawsuits.

In October 2023, Valerie Bunker filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Key School alleging that school officials failed to protect her from two teachers who abused her in the 1970s.

That same month, another lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Harford County against the school board citing various acts of abuse. The John Doe plaintiff alleged he was abused by two school employees between 1985-1986 and 1991-1992.

The two employees are not named defendants in the lawsuit.

The Key School and the Harford County board assert that the 2023 law is unconstitutional.

Sean L. Gugerty, an attorney representing the Key School, said a 2017 law on sexual abuse claims established an “absolute time bar” for older cases.

“Our position on the 2017 law is that the General Assembly meant exactly what it said,” Gugerty argued Tuesday.

That right granted institutions “the right to be free of liability,” he said.

“Once that right vested, the claims cannot be revived,” Gugerty said.

Additionally, the court asked attorneys for the school board to address the question of whether the board had legal standing, as a government entity, to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

“The board respectfully submits that it does indeed have standing both in its own right and on behalf of the non-perpetrator board employee defendants whom the board must defend and must indemnify in this case, where they collectively have been sued in court for allegations of sexual abuse that, prior to being resurrected by the child victims Act, had been time barred for over 25 years,” said Edmund J. O’Meally, an attorney representing the board.

Danielle Desaulniers Stempel, an attorney representing the John Doe in the school board case, argued that the Harford County board as a “creature of the state” cannot challenge the law.

“There is a more fundamental problem with the board suit, which is that it also does not have standing to raise that question here, based on the very same doctrine,” she said. “As a political subdivision, child of the state, the board cannot challenge state law as unconstitutional.”

The challenge by the Washington archbishop stems from a class action lawsuit filed in October by John Doe, Richard Roe and Mark Smith.

Attorneys for the archbishop argue that a 2017 law passed by the legislature drew a clear line prohibiting victims of decades-old abuse from filing lawsuits in the future.

“The legislature was doing something different,” said Richard Cleary, an attorney for the church. “They were doing something more. They were putting to rest a specific category of claims against a specific category of defendants … the substantive grant of immunity after a specific period of time, the substantive right conferred to a specific category of defendants, is a key feature, and perhaps the most important feature for statutes of repose.”

Robert Peck, an attorney for the class action suit against the archdiocese, said the legislature was well within its right to pass the 2023 law.

“Certainly, there is no state interest in encouraging childhood sexual abuse or just as condemnable actions that facilitate or are complicit with it or cover up,” Peck said. “The General Assembly sent a strong message with the CVA that victims matter.”

Peck added that there is “nothing in the state constitution or prior assembly’s actions prevents the assembly” from allowing survivors to sue those institutions now.