PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com
by Maria Panaritis and Angela Couloumbis, STAFF WRITERS
HARRISBURG – The top aide to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane testified Monday that portions of a bill that could open the door to a new wave of lawsuits by child sex-abuse victims are unconstitutional.
Bruce L. Castor Jr., who Kane hired this year as her solicitor general, told a Senate committee that retroactively extending the statute of limitations for victims to file civil suits over decades-old abuse would violate the state constitution’s so-called remedies clause.
“However righteous the policy goals behind (the bill), the General Assembly in its zeal, cannot overrule a state constitutional right,” said Castor.
Kane appeared before the panel as well, but steered clear from giving her opinion on the legislation’s constitutionality.
Their testimony came during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that allowed for the Senate’s first public airing of the measure, which would give child sex abuse victims until age 50 to sue their attackers or the institutions that supervised them.
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