Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe: The Constitutionality of Retroactively Turning Back the Clock an Child Sexual Abuse Claims

Lindsey Rosenbloom

Over one in five individuals under age eighteen will experience some form of child sexual abuse. Yet for decades, civil legal remedies have fallen short of addressing the profound harms caused by child sexual abuse. With survivors often delaying disclosure for years or even decades, many have been unable to pursue claims under traditional temporal limitations. However, when Maryland enacted the Child Victims Act of 2023 (“CVA”) to retroactively eliminate the time bar for civil child sexual abuse claims, it sparked a conflict between survivors’ right to redress and institutions’ claim to repose. In Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe, the Supreme Court of Maryland addressed whether lifting the time bar on civil claims of child sexual abuse violated the vested rights of non-perpetrator defendants. The court applied a functional framework to statutory interpretation, distinguishing between statutes of limitations, which govern procedural timing, and statutes of repose, which create substantive, vested rights. The court determined that the relevant provision passed in 2017 was a statute of limitations, which does not establish a vested right to be free from liability under the Maryland Constitution. In finding the provision to be a statute of limitations, rather than repose, the court correctly looked beyond ambiguous labels to conduct a critical analysis of the statute’s function and the legislature’s intent, and ultimately upheld the constitutionality of the CVA, which eliminated the statute of limitations with retroactive effect. With this decision, the court clarified the constitutional boundaries of retroactive remedial legislation and affirmed the General Assembly’s power to retroactively amend legislation to achieve justice and bring Maryland law in line with modern science and the public’s interest in holding guilty institutions accountable.