In its anxiety to be seen doing something good, the Maryland General Assembly has managed to do something gravely disfiguring. What began as a noble effort to deliver long-overdue justice to survivors of institutional child sexual abuse has now become a cautionary tale in legislative vanity — a textbook example of what happens when lawmakers legislate emotion unmoored from economics.
I refer to the 2023 Child Victims Act, Maryland’s morally urgent and fiscally negligent decision to lift the statute of limitations for abuse claims. The law, passed with great fanfare and a flood of self-congratulation, created what Maryland Matters reporter Bryan P. Sears has since documented as a staggering wave of lawsuits — thousands of them — aimed not just at religious institutions, but at the State of Maryland itself.
The cost? Sears reports that conservative estimates place potential state liability around $4 billion, a figure that rivals Maryland’s already cavernous structural deficit. And the real number may be even higher. Attorneys representing survivors say they’re handling claims from over 4,500 clients — with hundreds, perhaps thousands, more expected…