Child Sexual Abuse Statute of Limitations: Civil, Criminal, Revival

The child sexual abuse statute of limitations sets how long a survivor has to file a criminal charge or a civil lawsuit, and the answer depends almost entirely on which state you are in and when the abuse occurred. As of 2026, at least 19 states have eliminated civil deadlines for these claims entirely, 44 states have removed criminal time limits for felony child sex offenses, and more than 30 states have passed “revival windows” that reopen the courthouse to claims that had already expired.¹

How Civil Deadlines Work

A civil statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a lawsuit for money damages. In child sexual abuse cases, the clock almost always pauses while the victim is a minor and starts running at age 18. That pause is called minority tolling.

From there, states take two main approaches. Age-based rules give a survivor until a specific age to sue. Discovery-based rules start the clock only when a survivor connects their injuries to the abuse, which for many people happens years or decades later. Most states combine the two and let a survivor use whichever deadline runs out later.²

States With No Civil Deadline

A growing group of jurisdictions lets a survivor sue at any time, with no deadline at all. CHILD USA lists Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, along with Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and federal civil claims. Several of these are recent: Maryland’s took effect in June 2025, and Oregon eliminated its civil deadline for incidents occurring on or after June 26, 2025.¹

States With Long Age-Based Windows

States that still have a deadline have mostly stretched it. New Jersey and Pennsylvania both allow suits up to 37 years after the survivor turns 18. Oklahoma allows claims until age 45. Oregon’s pre-2025 rule allows claims until age 40. Texas in 2025 extended its civil deadline to 20 years after a victim’s 18th birthday for offenses against minors under 17. Connecticut allows claims up to 30 years after age 21.²¹

A few places still have very short windows. Alabama has no statute specific to child sexual abuse and uses its general two-year personal injury limit. Puerto Rico allows only one year from the event or from reaching the age of majority. The U.S. Virgin Islands allows two years after age 21.²

The Discovery Rule

The discovery rule pauses the limitations clock until a survivor realizes, or reasonably should have realized, that their injuries were caused by the abuse. It exists because many survivors do not link their adult psychological difficulties to childhood abuse until long after the standard deadline would have expired.³

Thirty-nine states apply some version of the discovery rule to child sexual abuse claims, whether by statute or through case law. In California, a survivor may file within 22 years of turning 18 or within five years of discovering that the abuse caused the injury, whichever is later. Florida allows four years from the time a victim discovers both the injury and its connection to the abuse.²

One important limit: the discovery rule often does not stretch as far when a survivor sues an institution rather than the individual abuser. Florida courts, for example, have ruled that the delayed discovery doctrine based on repressed memory does not apply to negligence or vicarious liability claims against institutional defendants like dioceses or schools. In Cisko v. Diocese of Steubenville, a Florida appeals court held that the discovery exception from Hearndon v. Graham is limited to intentional tort claims against the actual perpetrator.⁴

Criminal Deadlines

On the criminal side, the trend toward eliminating deadlines is even stronger. Forty-four states, six U.S. territories, and the federal government have removed criminal statutes of limitations for felony child sex offenses such as rape, sexual assault, and child sex trafficking.⁵ Under 18 U.S.C. § 3283, there is no federal limitations period for prosecution of sex crimes against a minor.⁶

The six states that still have some criminal time limits for child sex offenses are Oregon, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, and New Hampshire.⁵ Even those have carve-outs. Oklahoma has no criminal statute of limitations when DNA evidence is available, and Vermont’s remaining 40-year limit applies only to certain lower-severity offenses like lewd conduct with a child.⁶

A key constitutional point applies to criminal cases but not civil ones. In Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607 (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court held 5–4 that the Ex Post Facto Clause bars reviving a criminal prosecution that was already time-barred. Justice Breyer’s majority opinion said that reviving an expired criminal case “inflicts punishment where the party was not, by law, liable to any punishment.”⁷ States can extend criminal deadlines that have not yet run, but they cannot bring back ones that already have.⁶

Revival Windows for Expired Civil Claims

One of the most important developments in this area is the revival window: a period during which survivors can file civil lawsuits that would otherwise be too late. Since 2002, more than 30 states and territories have enacted some version of a revival law.⁵

These windows take different shapes. Some open the courthouse for one to three years. Some are permanent age-based revivals, allowing anyone under a certain age to file regardless of when the abuse occurred. A few are permanent and unconditional. A sample:

New York’s Child Victims Act opened a window from August 2019 to August 2021, during which 10,783 lawsuits were filed on behalf of 14,588 individuals.⁸
California’s AB 218 created a three-year lookback window beginning January 1, 2020, and raised the permanent age-based revival limit to age 40.⁹
Guam enacted a permanently open, unconditional revival in 2016 that reaches perpetrators, private organizations, and the government.¹⁰
Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio passed targeted revival windows specifically for claims against the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy estate.¹⁰

Can States Revive Already-Expired Civil Claims?

Whether a legislature can revive a civil claim after its deadline has run is the sharpest open question in this area. The U.S. Supreme Court answered it long ago for federal constitutional purposes. In Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304 (1945), the Court held that a state may “repeal or extend a statute of limitations, even after right of action is barred thereby, restore to the plaintiff his remedy, and divest the defendant of the statutory bar.” The Court called limitation periods “practical and pragmatic devices” of legislative grace.¹¹

But state constitutions can impose their own limits, and state high courts are now split roughly five to five. Courts in North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Vermont, and Louisiana (on rehearing) have upheld revival laws. Courts in Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, Kentucky, and Utah have struck them down.¹²

The January 2025 ruling in Dupuis v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland shows the reasoning on the restrictive side. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that once a statute of limitations runs, a defendant has a “constitutionally protected vested right” to be free from the claim, and that reviving it violates separation of powers.¹³ The same week, the North Carolina Supreme Court went the other way in McKinney v. Goins, unanimously upholding the SAFE Child Act’s two-year lookback and finding that statutes of limitations fall outside the vested rights doctrine.¹⁴ Days later, the Maryland Supreme Court agreed in Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. John Doe that an ordinary statute of limitations does not give a defendant a vested right to remain free from liability.¹⁵

If your state is in the “struck down” column, a revival window may not help you even if the legislature passes one. If it is in the “upheld” column, previously expired claims can proceed.

Federal Civil Claims

President Biden signed the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act on September 16, 2022. The law removed the statute of limitations entirely for federal civil claims by survivors of child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and forced labor. Before the change, federal civil claims had to be filed by age 28 or within 10 years of discovery.¹⁶ The law applies to any claim not already barred as of the date of enactment and to all claims arising afterward.¹⁷

In February 2026, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced S. 3815, known as “Virginia’s Law,” named for Virginia Giuffre, a Jeffrey Epstein accuser who died in April 2025. The bill would create new federal civil causes of action for victims of sexual abuse and transportation for illegal sexual activity, eliminate the statute of limitations for those claims, and add a one-year lookback window for previously barred cases. It was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a companion effort in the House led by Representative Teresa Leger Fernández.¹⁸¹⁹

What These Laws Have Produced

Revival windows and extended deadlines have produced a large volume of litigation against institutions where abuse occurred, with substantial recoveries for survivors.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed in 2024 to pay $880 million to more than 1,000 victims, on top of prior payouts exceeding $740 million, bringing total payments past $1.5 billion. A federal judge approved an Archdiocese of New Orleans settlement of at least $230 million in December 2025. The Diocese of Camden reached a $180 million bankruptcy resolution in February 2026. The Diocese of Syracuse closed bankruptcy that same month with a $176 million settlement trust. The Archdiocese of Baltimore has a proposed settlement of nearly $170 million pending, including $100 million from the Hartford Insurance Group.²⁰²¹ The Diocese of San Diego filed for bankruptcy in 2024 after roughly 400 lawsuits were filed under California’s revival window, and the Diocese of Oakland entered Chapter 11 in 2023 after more than 300 lawsuits.

The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 and faced approximately 82,000 abuse claims. The total settlement value is $2.46 billion, with about $1.65 billion held in escrow from settling insurers. On January 12, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the global settlement, making it final.²² As of March 2026, the Scouting Settlement Trust had disbursed over $295.5 million to 36,896 survivors, with payments initially capped at 1.5% of claim values pending resolution of a dispute over reserves for future claims; a supplemental distribution of 3.2% began on March 3, 2026.²³

Public schools have also been exposed to large liability. A January 2025 report by California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team estimated that school districts face $2 billion to $3 billion in total liability from AB 218 claims, with an average claim value of about $2.5 million per victim. Los Angeles Unified alone accounts for an estimated $500 million.²⁴ In New York, the city alone has paid over $160 million to settle more than 150 Child Victims Act lawsuits, with over 1,200 total actions filed against the city.²⁵

Still Changing

The law here is moving. Six states enacted new reforms in 2025 alone: Arkansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas.¹ In 2026, a Missouri House bill passed 95–12 that would extend the civil deadline from the current 10 years after turning 21 to age 41, and a separate Senate bill would eliminate the statute of limitations entirely and allow suits against facilitating institutions “at any time.”²⁶ Because deadlines, revival windows, and state constitutional rulings continue to shift, a survivor who was told years ago that their claim was too late should check their state’s current law before concluding the door is closed.

1
CHILD USA. 2025 SOL Tracker
2
National Conference of State Legislatures. State Civil Statutes of Limitations in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
3
Iowa Law Review. Developing a More Sensible Approach to the Discovery Rule in Civil Actions Based on Childhood Sexual Abuse
4
The Florida Bar. Applying the Statutes of Limitation in Institutional Childhood Sex Abuse Cases
5
Enough Abuse. What Is the Statute of Limitations on Child Sexual Abuse
6
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. Statutes of Limitation in Sexual Assault Cases
7
Justia US Supreme Court. Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607
8
NBC News. New York Child Victims Act Lawsuits Remain in Limbo Five Years Later
9
Advocate Magazine. Childhood Sexual Abuse Cases
10
CHILD USA. US Windows and Revival Laws for CSA Since 2002
11
Justia US Supreme Court. Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304
12
State Court Report. State High Courts Split on Laws Letting Survivors of Sexual Abuse Sue After Statute of Limitations Expires
13
Justia Law. Dupuis v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, 2025 ME 6
14
North Carolina Department of Justice. North Carolina Supreme Court Upholds the SAFE Child Act
15
Maryland Courts. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. John Doe
16
The Hill. Biden Signs Bill Eliminating Civil Statute of Limitations for Child Sex Abuse Victims
17
U.S. House of Representatives. S. 3103, Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act of 2022
18
U.S. Congress. Congressional Record, S. 3815
19
The Hill. Epstein Survivors Push for Justice
20
U.S. News & World Report. A Look at the Largest Clergy Abuse Settlements Reached by Catholic Organizations in the US
21
SNAP Network. Bankruptcy Tracker
22
Bloomberg Law. Boy Scouts Bankruptcy Plan, Abuse Deal Avoids High Court Review
23
Scouting Settlement Trust. Scouting Settlement Trust
24
EdSource. Schools, Districts Weighed Down by New Costs of Old Sexual Assaults
25
City & State New York. NYC Paid $160 Million in Settlements Under Child Victims Act
26
Missouri Independent. Bill Extending Statute of Limitations for Childhood Sexual Abuse Heads to Missouri Senate