RALEIGH, N.C. (Legal Newsline) - A North Carolina appeals court had the power to allow a YMCA chapter to mount a constitutional challenge to a law that extended the statute of limitations for childhood sex-abuse victims, the state’s highest court ruled, rejecting arguments a strong dissent provided grounds to reverse the appeals court’s order.
A dissenting judge in 2021 wrote that allowing the YMCA to proceed thwarted the will of the North Carolina legislature and would give an incentive to other litigants to make similar appeals. But those objections weren’t relevant to the question of whether the YMCA had made a valid constitutional challenge to how the law was applied in its case, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in a June 16 decision.
Joseph Cryan and several others sued the YMCA over abuse they suffered from Michael Todd Pegram when he was employed there. All of the claims were barred by the North Carolina statute of limitations until 2019, when the state legislature amended the law to allow abuse lawsuits to be filed within two years of the criminal conviction of the perpetrator.
The YMCA moved to dismiss the case, arguing the 2019 law was unconstitutional as applied to the facts in its case. The trial judge instead sent the case to a three-judge panel in the Wake County Superior Court that the legislature established in 2014 to hear constitutional challenges to state laws. The defendants filed an interlocutory appeal with the North Carolina Court of Appeals, arguing the three-judge panel couldn’t hear “as-applied” challenges. The appeals court allowed the YMCA’s challenge to proceed.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing it had jurisdiction because Judge Jeffery Carpenter had written a lengthy dissent raising important questions. The Supreme Court refused jurisdiction however, saying the dissent explained in detail why the writ would undermine the intent of the General Assembly but contained only one sentence opposing the decision that the YMCA had a valid as-applied challenge.
“If this sort of vague, implied disagreement with the majority’s decision—one in which the dissenting judge provided no reasoning—could be sufficient to confer jurisdiction on this Court, so too would a judge in a single-issue appeal stating, `I dissent,’” the court said.