A group of people suing Maine’s Catholic Church has asked the state’s highest court to reconsider a ruling that bars them from bringing decades-old claims of childhood sexual abuse.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court last month shot down a 2021 law that let survivors file lawsuits, even if their claims had expired under previous statutes of limitations. That law allowed dozens of people to sue the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, alleging its leaders knew about abuse they endured as far back as the 1950s, yet failed to protect others from the same perpetrators.

The majority opinion had little to do with the allegations at the heart of these cases and was instead a hardline stance against the Legislature’s effort to revive time-barred claims.

The diocese asked the high court to consider the constitutionality of these claims in 2023. The diocese argued it had a “vested right” in the protections it enjoyed under Maine’s previous statute of limitations. Without those protections, the diocese is open to potentially millions of dollars in damages.

But the plaintiffs’ attorneys argue in a motion filed Tuesday that the high court ignored “the plain language” of the Maine Constitution, which “unambiguously says that the State may impair property rights — or fundamental rights, for that matter — as long as the impairment satisfies ‘due process of law.'”

A spokesperson for those lawyers, Michael Bigos and Timothy Kenlan, said they are declining to comment “out of respect for the Law Court.”

An attorney for the diocese did not respond to an email Tuesday evening.

Bigos and Kenlan also argue the court’s recent decision wrongly limits the Legislature’s authority. They said it “impairs a co-equal constitutional branch of government, disregards the Legislature’s authority to exercise its police powers, and thus violates the plain language of Maine’s Constitution.”

They suggest the state is allowed to impair “vested rights” if “it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest,” or if it is “related to a legitimate government interest.”

“But to hold that all statutes that impair vested rights are unconstitutional — as the Majority did — regardless of the governmental interest and regardless of whether the statute is narrowly tailored or reasonably related to that government interest, misapprehends and overlooks the legislative authority delegated” in the Constitution, the plaintiffs wrote.

If the court overturns its decision, it would be unusual.

But it’s not unheard of — Louisiana’s supreme court found a similar law unconstitutional in early 2024, only to change its mind months later at the urging of the state’s attorney general.

Maine’s attorney general defended the law during oral arguments in November 2023. A spokesperson for that office declined last month to comment on the court’s ruling.

Many states have passed similar laws to Maine’s. Court decisions on challenges to these laws have run the gamut.

Just days after the Maine decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court took the opposite stance. Courts in Kentucky, Utah and Colorado, meanwhile, have found retroactive laws unconstitutional.