In an unusual move, the Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday granted a rehearing of its recent split decision overturning a state law that gave childhood sexual abuse victims additional time to sue their alleged assailants.
Five of the seven justices voted in favor of the rehearing, but Justice James Genovese and Jefferson Hughes III dissented. Chief Justice John Weimer separately suggested that the case should be set for oral arguments before the end of this month.
The high court’s March 22 decision overturning the state law that was unanimously passed by the state Legislature was handed down in a case that pitted multiple plaintiffs against the Society of Roman Catholic Church, Diocese of Lafayette, and the St. Martin De Tours Catholic Church. In that case, those who brought the lawsuit alleged they were molested between the years 1971 and 1979.
Under a previous law, the plaintiffs were time-barred from suing the defendants because the alleged abuses occurred so long ago, but state lawmakers in 2021 and 2022 put in place a “lookback window” to allow such timed-out allegations to move forward.
Kristi Schubert, an attorney with the Lamothe Firm in New Orleans who has represented scores of childhood sexual abuse survivors, said the decision by the court to rehear the case was a rare event.
“I would estimate that the Louisiana Supreme Court denies approximately 90% to 95% of requests for rehearing,” Schubert told the Louisiana Record in an email. “Sometimes they grant rehearing for the sole reason of correcting a technical problem with the prior opinion, but when they do that they typically issue a ruling correcting the problem on the same day that they issue the ruling granting the rehearing.”
She also noted that in the wake of the March decision, the state Legislature introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 26, which condemned the ruling and affirmed that the Legislature’s intent was to apply the provisions of the law retroactively for a limited time period. The resolution, which passed the state House of Representatives unanimously this week, says the Legislature never intended to create a vested property right for alleged perpetrators, as the state Supreme Court concluded in the Bienvenu v. Defendant 1 decision.
“When the Bienvenu ruling came out in March, there was an enormous public backlash,” Schubert said. “Abuse survivors felt that the court had robbed them of their last chance for justice. And Louisiana citizens were outraged that the court had granted child molesters an untouchable constitutional right to get away with child rape.”
In the March ruling authored by Genovese, the court held that the defendants held “a vested property right in accrued prescription,” that is, a right stemming from the state’s previous time limitation for bringing such lawsuits.
But Judge Hughes’ dissent in the decision to rehear the case equated sexual abuse survivors to “special interests” and referenced an ancient Babylonian legal text.
“As far back as the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC), civilizations have provided time limits on legal claims as an essential element of fairness,” he said. “Special-interest exceptions are anathema to the broader and more important concept of Justice. Equal protection means equal.”
Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, also urged the court to reverse the Bienvenu decision, warning that the March ruling “is an open door for freewheeling judicial policymaking.”