The Maryland General Assembly passed revisions to the Child Victims Act Saturday, just two years after the law lifted the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse claims and opened the courthouse doors to thousands of survivors.

The changes, which would slash the amount of money survivors can win in court, come despite warnings from plaintiff’s attorneys that they may be unconstitutional.

“It’s a bad idea,” one attorney told a Senate committee this week.

Legislators were determined to change the law this year as it became clear that the state of Maryland could face billions of dollars in liability stemming from Child Victims Act lawsuits. As many as 5,500 survivors who say they were abused in Maryland’s juvenile detention system have filed claims or are preparing to do so, according to attorneys.

Maryland’s difficult budget picture this year heightened the urgency and pushed Del. C.T. Wilson, who spent years fighting to pass the Child Victims Act, to introduce a bill that would change the law.

The bill went through several significant alterations as it passed through the legislature. The final version that passed Saturday will cut by more than half the amount of damages that survivors can win in court.

For public institutions, like the state, the cap will be lowered from $890,000 to $400,000; for private institutions, like churches and parochial schools, the cap will be slashed from $1.5 million to $700,000.

The new caps will apply to claims filed on or after June 1. Claims that have already been filed, or are filed between now and May 31, will still be able to win the higher amounts.

Attorneys’ fees will also be capped at 20% of the total award if the case settles and 25% if it goes to trial. And crucially, the new legislation clarifies that even if a survivor was abused multiple times, they are still subject to the same cap. A person who was abused 10 times at a state juvenile detention center would only be able to receive $400,000.

That’s a problem, plaintiffs’ attorneys said, because survivors who already filed claims under the Child Victims Act have a “vested right” in being able to win money for each time they were abused.

“Trying to retroactively say the cap is per person, not per incident, is unconstitutional,” attorney Tom Yost said at a hearing Friday.

He argued that the changes are likely to backfire by encouraging more survivors to sue before June 1 so they can still win the larger sums of money.

“Everybody who is on the fence about making a claim is going to find a lawyer,” Yost said. “I’ve told my staff they’re going to be working seven days a week if this bill passes.”

Attorneys also said the total cost of settling with survivors who were abused in state institutions may be much lower than lawmakers fear — some estimates floated during the session have suggested that Maryland could be on the hook for several billion dollars.

But many of the claims will settle for less than the cap, lawyers said.

“Sometimes the right thing is expensive,” said Corey Stern, another plaintiff’s attorney. “But it’s probably not as expensive as you think.”

After passing out of the Judicial Proceedings Committee on Saturday morning, the bill moved quickly through the Senate.

The final vote of 36-7 came after some senators raised concerns.

Sen. Chris West questioned whether the General Assembly was taking the appropriate – and constitutional – path forward to deal with the financial pressure of potential settlements and court awards.

West warned that the part of the bill that limits victim to being compensated for one claim, rather than each time they were abused, may run counter to prior court decisions. He noted a recent finding from the Maryland Supreme Court that an inmate who was assaulted twice in the span of a few minutes had two separate claims.

“This is going to be a lawsuit. … It will surely go right up to the Maryland Supreme Court,” said West, a Baltimore County Republican.

Sen. Justin Ready, a Carroll County Republican, said it was important to give survivors of child sexual abuse more ability to sue institutions where they were injured. But prior actions by lawmakers to throw the courthouse door open to so many lawsuits was “reckless” and a mistake, he said.

Ready and West both suggested estimates of the state’s liability into the billions of dollars, depending on how the cases all shake out.

Ready noted the heartburn over the past weeks in closing a $3 billion budget gap. Child abuse settlements and court awards could easily eclipse that, he said.

The state should have put together a process to screen the cases and make it more “manageable,” Ready said.

Sen. Will Smith, a Democrat and chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the bill moving forward balanced the need to give survivors a chance for justice with tough financial times.

“On balance, I think this is the right way to go,” he said.

Survivors who advocated for the Child Victims Act said they were surprised that lawmakers lowered the cap for private institutions, as well as the state. Unlike the state, private institutions can file for bankruptcy if they can’t afford to cover the claims. The Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for bankruptcy just days before the Child Victims Act took effect, for example.

“The reality is that the responsibility for any fiscal pressure on the state rests solely on the shoulders of those who committed and condoned the abuse, not on the Child Victims Act,” said Frank Schindler, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse who pushed for the law. “If these individuals and institutions did not rape children, the Child Victims Act would be irrelevant to them. Any discussion of the [law] should start from that point.”

And David Lorenz, who heads the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said this year’s debate focused on money and failed to confront the real issue facing the state of Maryland.

“We’re not addressing what happened to those children,” he said. “I just couldn’t get over that.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Brenda Wintrode contributed to this report.