Federal judge sends question on Maryland Child Victims Act's constitutionality to state Supreme Court
BALTIMORE — A federal judge sent a question about the constitutionality of Maryland’s Child Victims Act to the state’s Supreme Court, potentially expediting a definitive ruling on the law, which affects scores of child sex abuse lawsuits.
The development came out of a federal lawsuit alleging a Mormon priest sexually abused a girl in Prince George’s County decades ago. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asked a federal judge to throw out the complaint, arguing the Child Victims Act was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar first raised the prospect of “certifying a question” about the act to the Supreme Court of Maryland last month, essentially asking the state’s highest court to define the state’s law. Bredar ruled Friday he would send a question, ordering the lawsuit to be paused until the Supreme Court provides an answer.
“The answer to this question is dispositive to the resolution of the Defendant’s currently pending Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, and there is no controlling Maryland appellate decision, constitutional provision, or statute,” Bredar wrote.
Bredar’s decision comes while several appeals of lawsuits brought under the Child Victims Act move through Maryland’s appellate courts.
Enacted last April, the law abolished a previous time limit for people sexually abused as children to sue the perpetrators and the institutions that enabled their torment. When the act took effect Oct. 1, a deluge of lawsuits flooded Maryland court dockets, targeting the likes of churches, schools and correctional facilities for abuse allegedly committed by priests, teachers and guards.
Institutions named as defendants in the lawsuits were quick to challenge the Child Victims Act as unconstitutional. They raised those arguments in requests to dismiss the lawsuits. Maryland Circuit Courts have ruled in at least three cases, with two judges deeming the law constitutional and a third, in Montgomery County, finding it violated the state constitution.
Defendants in cases in Prince George’s and Harford counties took advantage of a provision in the act allowing for a mid-lawsuit appeal. In Montgomery County, attorneys representing a man who said he was sexually abused by clergy in the Archdiocese of Washington, which is headquartered in Maryland, said they plan to appeal the judge’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional.
The Washington diocese promptly appealed to the Appellate Court of Maryland when a Prince George’s County judge found the law constitutional on March 6. The Board of Education for Harford County followed suit April 1, weeks after a county judge there ruled a child sex abuse lawsuit could proceed under the Child Victims Act.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the proposed class-action lawsuit in Prince George’s — three men who say they were sexually abused by clergy and others in the Washington diocese’s employ — told The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday that they intended to request this week that the Supreme Court of Maryland reach down and take the church’s appeal from the intermediate appellate court.
A certified question from a federal court functions much the same as an appeal from state court.
Appeals from a federal judge and multiple state courts on the same legal question have sent the child victims law into uncharted territory. Experts have said the Supreme Court has multiple paths forward, but it’s unclear how the high court will proceed.
The Maryland Supreme Court had not yet received the question from Bredar as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, said Bradley Tanner, a spokesman for the state judiciary.
As for how the high court would handle having a certified question from the federal courts and forthcoming state appeals on the same issue, Tanner would say only that the justices would follow the Maryland statute on certified questions.
Jonathan Schochor, whose firm is behind the proposed class-action lawsuit in Prince George’s County, said he believes the cases will “be consolidated at the Supreme Court level and jointly argued.”
“They fully understand we’re coming up. There may be a case out of Harford County coming up. And we’ll all be there together,” Schochor told The Baltimore Sun.
How quickly the Supreme Court will act on the matter is also murky, but Schochor said he plans to ask the court for an accelerated schedule to resolve the case.
“We will ask for an expedited ruling because the (Child Victims Act) is so important and so significant to all Marylanders and of course those minors who were sexually abused,” Schochor said.
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