How to end the legislative standoff over child sex victim lawsuits

Helping people who were raped and molested when they were children decades ago should have been the easiest task of the year for the Pennsylvania Legislature.

It was only a few years back that the House and Senate put politics aside and approved bipartisan legislation that would have allowed victims to sue their abusers, if voters approved an amendment to the state Constitution to temporarily void the statute of limitations.

That vote never happened because in 2020, state administrators bungled the amendment process. The Department of State failed to advertise it so people would understand what they would be voting on.

Several years of good legislative work were destroyed by bureaucratic incompetence. Pitiful.

But the mistake should not have been so difficult to overcome.

All lawmakers had to do was repeat the process. Instead, they are locked in a partisan standoff, using long-tormented sex abuse victims as pawns.

In January, the Republican-controlled Senate passed legislation proposing an amendment that, if approved, would allow victims to sue. But Senate leaders got greedy.

They bundled that noncontroversial referendum into legislation that would ask voters to approve two other constitutional amendments. One would require voters to show identification at every election. The other would make it easier for lawmakers to overturn state regulations.

That was low, and evidence of the true priorities of the Republican leadership.

They made this about their political goals instead of about justice for children who were raped and molested by priests, teachers, coaches and other adults who held positions of power that made it easy to escape punishment at the time.

The Democratic-controlled House, on the other hand, focused on the victims.

On Friday, it passed two simple bills on the matter. One would schedule a vote on an amendment to allow lawsuits. The other would authorize retroactive lawsuits through legislation.

Now the Legislature is at a standoff.

The Senate says the House should vote on its bundled bill. The House refuses.

Neither chamber seems willing to budge.

Before he resigned his position abruptly Tuesday, House Speaker Mark Rozzi said that if he had called for a vote on the Senate’s bundled bill, “I’d be contributing to Harrisburg doing more of the same. I’d be furthering a dysfunctional Harrisburg.”

He’s right about that. Rozzi, D-Berks, who said he was raped by his parish priest at age 13, deserves credit for standing his ground.

But it doesn’t appear as if the Senate is going to back down.

The day the Senate bill passed, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said the vote would “be the final time the Senate of Pennsylvania addresses this matter.”

“There is no valid justification for preventing voters from having a direct voice on voter identification, regulation reform and opening the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse survivors through constitutional questions,” Pittman, of Indiana County, said in a statement Feb. 24.

It’s poor government to legislate by constitutional amendment. But if that’s the game Pittman prefers, then the Senate should propose those three amendments individually instead of bundling them and holding child sex abuse victims hostage to politics.

There has to be a compromise.

Here’s my suggestion for how Pittman and new House Speaker Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia, should iron this out.

The House should agree to pass a referendum asking voters if they want to amend the state Constitution to require voter ID. The Senate could then pass it and get it on the ballot.

In exchange, the Senate should pass the House referendum to ask voters if retroactive lawsuits should be allowed by child sex abuse victims.

A voter ID requirement should not be a sticking point. It is not onerous.

In the last legislative session, Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, proposed a reasonable plan. It would require counties to send a new registration card to every voter to use as their voter identification. There would be no need to scramble to get compliant ID for those without a driver’s license, college or other government-issued cards.

And, if a voter were to show up without identification, they still could vote after signing an affidavit affirming their identity, with the understanding they could face perjury charges if they lie.

That plan was part of broader legislation that was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

That’s reasonable and could be revived to satisfy the requirement should voters approve the referendum.

Everyone would feel like they won. And sex abuse victims would truly win.