On Board Online • February 4, 2019

Timothy G. Kremer
NYSSBA Executive Director

On Jan. 28, the state Legislature overwhelmingly passed the Child Victims Act, which Gov. Cuomo is expected to sign soon. New York would become the 10th state to greatly extend the statute of limitations for childhood sex abuse cases.

Groups including the American Insurance Association and the Boy Scouts of America opposed the bill. New York's Catholic Conference initially opposed the bill, then withdrew its opposition.

NYSSBA's official position on the bill was "no objection." In this case, we took the rare step of writing a memo to legislators on a bill that we neither supported nor opposed. We stated that for an alleged victim to sue a school district many years after an alleged incident, the allegations ought to include a claim that school district officials knew about the alleged abuse but failed to take action.