Talk about unintended consequences!
In 2023, Maryland Democrats voted to stick it to the Catholic Church by lifting the statute of limitations on suing for child sexual abuse after an investigative report of the Archdiocese of Baltimore showed over 600 children had been abused there since the 1940s.
Now, this might have been well intentioned, but it was also a clear attempt, and a successful one, to damage the Catholic Church in Maryland.
The Archdiocese had to file for bankruptcy after the law was passed.
But while the lawmakers were busy high-fiving the destruction of those awful Catholics, they ended up stepping in their own trap.
Much to their chagrin, they had forgotten that there are a lot more evil public servants than evil Catholic priests.
Within days of the original law being cleared by the Maryland Supreme Court, thousands of sexual abuse cases were filed against the state of Maryland's juvenile justice system.
Will Smith, a Democrat, noted that lawmakers approved the 2023 Child Victims Act in response ‘to a long fight to have justice for victims of child sex abuse, where our prior framework barred some of those claims if you were above the age of 38.
‘But what we could never have anticipated was just the sheer volume of cases that ensued.'
They thought it was JUST the Catholic Church that was the problem. They had no clue that so many government employees might be hit with suits.
Smith estimates the settlements could be upwards of $4 billion, which is as much as the state's current yearly deficit.
And in that light, the legislature quickly wrote a new law and voted to limit their liability in the cases. (And I do mean quickly - it went from draft, to committee, to the floor in the state House and Senate, and to the governor's desk in two days — TWO DAYS.)
The measure reduces caps on settlements from $890,000 to $400,000 for cases filed after May 31 for state institutions.
And Governor Moore quickly put his pen to the legislation signing it into law.
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