CV NEWS FEED // The Archdiocese of Washington is expected to appeal the decision of a local court after it recently determined the Maryland Child Victims Act to be Constitutional.
According to a local report from The Baltimore Sun, the diocesesan appeal of Circuit Judge Robin D. Gill Bright’s decision on Wednesday is “setting up what’s expected to be an expedited process to have the state’s highest court hear an appeal.”
The Archdiocese announced immediately following the decision that it planned to appeal, citing “important constitutional principles […] at issue in the cases” filed against the Catholic Church and public institutions alike.
Explaining the Archdiocese’s motivation for filing the appeal, the report continued:
Attorneys for the Washington diocese centered their argument on a 2017 Maryland law that extended until age 38 the period in which survivors of child sex abuse could sue their abusers and the institutions that employed them.
The church’s lawyers contend the earlier law included a provision granting defendants immunity from such claims filed after a survivor’s 38th birthday. Lawyers for the church say that provision, called a “statute of repose,” creates a “vested right” that cannot be repealed.
The Child Victims Act, which took effect in October of last year, “allows people who suffered sexual abuse as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their torment, no matter how much time has passed.”
After the law was passed, child sex-abuse lawsuits which had been blocked by the former statute of limitations in the state immediately “flooded Maryland courts.”
Lawmakers passed the Act with “a provision allowing for mid-lawsuit appeal regarding its constitutionality.” Furthermore, while the appeal would first go to the intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland, legal experts in the report predict that representatives for plaintiffs will ask a presumably willing Supreme Court of Maryland to hear the case.
“(Lawmakers) are the ultimate arbiter of what public policy is in the state of Maryland and here they have made their intent clear,” said Robert S. Peck, a legal representative for one of the victims who filed suit after the law passed.“Providing justice to those victims for their childhood experience is clearly something the legislature can do,” Peck concluded.
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