At a fiery committee hearing in Annapolis on Wednesday, Del. C.T. Wilson repeatedly insisted that his landmark law removing the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse lawsuits was “never about the money.”

But an ongoing debate over the law, the Child Victims Act, has become all about the money.

With Maryland facing a $3 billion budget crisis — and potentially billions of dollars in liability over child sexual abuse lawsuits brought by survivors — Wilson is in the uncomfortable position of trying to pare back the Child Victims Act to protect the state’s coffers.

“I don’t believe that this undoes the progress that we fought hard for,” Wilson said of his new bill to alter the Child Victims Act. “It was never about financial gain.”

The bill would force survivors with claims against the state to enter an “alternative dispute resolution program” instead of proceeding in court. That means survivors would have to resolve their claims through arbitration, rather than in a jury trial.

The program would apply to future claims and to all claims that are currently pending in court. The bill would, in effect, take all existing claims out of litigation and place them in the arbitration program instead. Survivors who are unhappy with the outcome of that program could still appeal and take their case to court for a jury trial.

An unnamed “state entity” would select a third party to carry out the arbitration and also produce an annual report summarizing the abuse claims, according to the bill. Survivors would be able to have their personal information excluded from the report.

Wilson said the reporting piece of the bill is designed to ensure that abusers are named and state money is publicly accounted for.

His bill would also cap the damages in sexual abuse claims filed after Oct. 1 at $400,000.

As it stands, the Child Victims Act allows survivors to seek up to $890,000 for claims against state or local governments. Wilson’s new proposal would put the damages cap for abuse claims against state institutions in line with the Maryland Tort Claims Act, which governs many lawsuits against the state.

The bill would also clarify that survivors cannot win damages for each instance of abuse and would only receive up to $400,000, no matter how many times they were abused.

Wilson faced tough questions about the bill from his fellow lawmakers on the House of Delegates Judiciary Committee. At one point, he erupted at Del. Robin Grammer, who asked whether it was fair for the state to limit its liability when private institutions would continue to face claims and a higher cap on damages. The cap on claims against private institutions is $1.5 million.

“If you’d like to punish and bankrupt the state, God bless you,” Wilson shouted. “If you don’t like this and you want to go to the taxpayer, you screw them, because I’m not.”

Wilson repeatedly shared his own experience as a childhood sexual abuse survivor during the painful, yearslong battle to pass the Child Victims Act of 2023. He apologized for his outburst later in Wednesday’s hearing, noting how difficult the issue is to talk about.

Most of Wilson’s fellow delegates tried to tread lightly as they sought more information about the bill, but their questions pointed to significant concerns.

One questioned whether lowering the damages cap for claims against the Department of Juvenile Services would disproportionately harm people of color — who one lawyer testified are the majority of people abused in state care. But survivors whose abuse came at the hands of a priest, for example, would still be able to win more money.

“We may be creating an unequal system,” Del. Jon Cardin said.

Wilson said that the state should pay less than private institutions for sexual abuse claims because it also shoulders the burden of covering public services that survivors use when their trauma goes unaddressed, like mental health services, incarceration and drug treatment programs.

He sought to portray the opposition as coming from plaintiff’s attorneys who stand to win legal fees from the settlements.

Committee members and other witnesses also raised questions about the constitutionality and transparency of the proposed amendments.

The bill does not lay out how the state would choose a third-party contractor to carry out arbitration with survivors, nor how the arbitration process would allow for public scrutiny of claims against the state and settlements.

And lawyers questioned whether it is constitutional to revoke or change the promises made to survivors in the Child Victims Act. In a letter to Wilson, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said the changes are likely to face court challenges but are “not clearly unconstitutional” and could be defended in court.

Lawmakers are also in a time crunch, making all of these questions more urgent. The legislative session will end on April 7, and Wilson’s bill already failed to clear one procedural hurdle when it wasn’t ready in time for crossover, the deadline for bills to pass one chamber and move to the other.

That will make it more challenging for the bill to pass, and it still needs to be considered in the Senate.

Attorneys have said the state is facing as many as 5,000 claims from people who say they were abused in state juvenile detention centers like the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center and the Thomas J.S. Waxter Children’s Center in Laurel.

The Attorney General’s Office is representing the state against the lawsuits and has been engaged in settlement negotiations. The office declined to comment Wednesday.

D. Todd Mathews, an attorney who has worked on the negotiations, said in written testimony that the AG’s office previously indicated that it wanted to resolve the claims instead of litigating them, but that the parties have been unable to agree on a settlement.

The letter does not name specific figures but described the plaintiffs’ monetary demand as “significantly lower” than $3 billion, which is one of several estimates of the state’s liability that has been floated during the legislative session.

The plaintiffs have also explored the possibility of Maryland using a bond to spread out the settlement payouts over 15 years, Mathews wrote. He described the proposed changes to the Child Victims Act as a “negotiating tactic” in the state’s settlement process.

Several critics of the changes also questioned the fairness of setting up a different resolution system for claims against the state, when private institutions would still have to go to court to defend themselves.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore, for example, filed for bankruptcy just before the Child Victims Act took effect, citing an expected flood of lawsuits.

In a statement, the Maryland Catholic Conference said the proposed amendments to the Child Victims Act would not allow abuse survivors to have their voices heard in court.

“That’s because the Child Victims Act uncovered a terrible truth: The largest employer of abusers in the State of Maryland appears to be the State of Maryland itself,” the group wrote.

“Instead of seeking accountability, the legislation seeks to increase disparity between victims, force arbitration and institute a closed-door state task force.”

Lawmakers also heard from a handful of survivors, including Antoine Harris, who said that his mother gave birth to him after being raped and impregnated by an employee at the Montrose School. Harris said he was also abused repeatedly when he went through state juvenile institutions himself.

“Equal justice under the law is appropriate for any victim, no matter who the offender is,” he told the committee. “Whether it’s the state, or a private agency, or an individual.”