MD Lawmakers Revise Child Victims Act, Legal Challenges Anticipated

During the 2025 legislative session, Maryland lawmakers adopted significant revisions to the Child Victims Act. These changes came as the number of claims against the state continued to rise, nearing 5,000.

In February the Supreme Court of Maryland upheld the Child Victims Act of 2023 as constitutional, but the most recent adjustments will likely find the legislation back in court. Similar to the original passage in 2023, the changes are anticipated to face additional constitutional challenges. The revised law, signed by Governor Wes Moore on April 22, 2025, reduces the maximum damages available to survivors of institutional child sexual abuse and imposes stricter filing deadlines.​

A key distinction to the changes is that they only apply to a case that was previously time barred due to the prior statute of limitations. The original standards from the 2023 legislation are still in effect for any new cases moving forward.

Some key changes for previously time barred claims include:

  • lowering the cap on damages for public institutions – $400K per claimant
  • capping attorneys fees – 25 percent if case goes to trial, 20 percent with settlement
  • establishes a deadline for cases to be filed under the previous standards – May 31, 2025
  • single payments for claimant regardless of number of incidents of abuse

As discussed on the Senate floor in the final days of the bills passage, all of these new standards, when juxtaposed with the previous ones, could see challenges. The combining of incidents into a single judgement in particular was recently foreshadowed in a decision by the Supreme Court of Maryland when they ruled that abuse that happened only minutes apart counted as separate instances.

At the time of passage for the original bill in 2023, MACo weighed in with a letter of information, supporting the intent of the bill and generally informing the legislature of the potential effects on local governments. While they are not zero, they are negligible in comparison to claims against the state, school systems, and private entities. Were a case to arise against a local government, a county partied to the suit would fall under the public institution standards.