April 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the first nationally coordinated Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), launched by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in 2001. This year’s theme, “25 Years Stronger: Looking Back, Moving Forward,” is a call to honor what the survivor advocacy movement has built and to reckon honestly with the work still ahead.

At Constant Legal Group, we believe awareness and legal access go together. This month, millions of people will wear teal ribbons and share statistics. What fewer people know is that the legal landscape for survivors is moving faster right now in terms of legislation passed, lookback windows opened, and institutions held accountable than at any other point in those 25 years. Here is where things stand.

What Has Actually Changed in the Last 25 Years

When SAAM launched in 2001, most survivors of historical institutional abuse had no realistic civil legal path. Statutes of limitations had expired. Institutions operated with near-total legal immunity for decades-old misconduct. The idea that a survivor could sue a diocese, a school district, or a government agency for abuse that happened in,  say, the 1970s was, in most states, legally impossible.

That has fundamentally changed. Delaware was among the first states to act, opening a two-year revival window for expired childhood sexual abuse claims from 2007 to 2009. The model pioneered by Delaware spread.  As of September 2025, 30 states and 3 U.S. territories have enacted revival windows or expanded statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse civil claims, according to the Enough Abuse Campaign and the Children’s Justice Campaign. Since 2003, more than $13 billion in publicly reported sexual abuse settlements and verdicts have been paid to survivors.  This is a figure that would have been unimaginable at SAAM’s founding.

The Legislative Wave of Windows Open Right Now

Several significant legal windows are active simultaneously as of this writing. Survivors and their attorneys should be aware of each.

New York City – GMVA Lookback Window – On January 29, 2026, the NYC Council overrode Mayor Eric Adams’ veto to enact Bill 1297-A, amending the Gender-Motivated Violence Act. The bill passed 48-0 the previous November. The amendment opens an 18-month lookback window, running through approximately July 29, 2027, for survivors of gender-motivated violence that occurred anywhere in New York City’s five boroughs before January 9, 2022. There is no floor on how far back the abuse could have occurred. Critically, the law explicitly extends liability to institutions, such as churches, schools, juvenile detention centers, hotels, and employers that enabled, concealed, or failed to prevent the abuse.

California – AB 250 – On October 13, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 250 into law. Effective January 1, 2026, the law creates a two-year lookback window through December 31, 2027, for adult survivors of sexual assault whose civil claims were previously barred by the statute of limitations. The law also allows claims against institutions that engaged in cover-ups, be they employers, schools, and hospitals that concealed prior assaults or ignored complaints.

Michigan – Justice for Survivors (SB 257–261) – In May 2025, the Michigan Senate passed a package of bills extending the civil statute of limitations for childhood and institutional sexual abuse survivors to the later of: 10 years after the abuse, 7 years after the survivor discovers the harm, or until age 42. The legislation also includes a retroactive one-year revival window for previously expired claims.

Federal – Virginia’s Law (S.3815) In February 2026, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced Virginia’s Law in the U.S. Senate, named for Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network, who became one of the most prominent advocates for victims of sexual exploitation. If enacted, the bill would eliminate statutes of limitations for federal civil lawsuits involving sex trafficking and sexual abuse entirely.

Louisiana – Louisiana’s lookback window for child sexual abuse claim whose constitutionality was challenged and then upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court remains open through June 2027.

Maryland – Child Victims Act (CVA) of 2023 – At this time, the State of Maryland has an unlimited lookback period for child sexual abuse cases under its Child Victims Act of 2023 (CVA).  Starting October 1, 2023, CVA permanently removed the statute of limitations.  This allows survivors to file lawsuits regardless of when the abuse occurred, including cases previously barred by time.

Vermont and Delaware – No Deadline, Ever – Vermont permanently eliminated its civil statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in July 2019, reviving all previously expired claims at the same time. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse in Vermont can file a civil lawsuit at any time. Similarly, Delaware has abolished the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse civil claims.  Survivors can file regardless of when the abuse occurred or how much time has passed.

The Verdicts That Defined the Past Year

Alongside the legislative movement, a series of landmark outcomes in 2024 and 2025 have demonstrated what institutional accountability looks like in practice.

Los Angeles County – $4 billion (April 2025) – On April 29, 2025, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a $4 billion settlement resolving more than 6,800 claims of sexual abuse at county-run juvenile detention facilities and foster care homes, representing abuse spanning from the late 1950s through the early 2000s. It is the largest institutional sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history.

Columbia University / NewYork-Presbyterian Hospitals – $750 million (May 2025) In May 2025, Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospitals agreed to pay $750 million to resolve claims from 576 patients of Dr. Robert Hadden, a former OB-GYN who abused patients for decades. Columbia received complaints about Hadden as early as 1994 and allowed him to continue practicing for 18 more years.  The settlement represents an average of approximately $1.3 million per survivor, the highest known per-case average in a U.S. sexual abuse lawsuit of this kind.

United Inn & Suites – $40 million federal TVPA verdict (2025) – A federal jury in Georgia returned a $40 million verdict against the United Inn & Suites and its owners.  This was the first civil jury verdict against a hotel under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Staff at the property ignored the abuse of a 16-year-old for 40 days, and they failed to report her as missing. The jury awarded $30 million of that total as punitive damages.

Archdiocese of Los Angeles – $880 million (2024) – In 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to resolve 1,353 clergy sexual abuse claims for $880 million.  This is believed to be the single largest child sexual abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese in U.S. history.

The Constitutional Battle Still Being Fought

The legislative gains are real, but they are not guaranteed to be ongoing. Lookback window laws are being actively challenged as unconstitutional across the country, and state supreme courts are divided.

Between 2020 and 2024, the high courts of Utah, Kentucky, and Colorado ruled that expired statutes of limitations create a vested right for defendants that cannot be retroactively stripped by legislation. In the same period, courts in Georgia, Vermont, North Carolina, Maryland, and Louisiana reached the opposite conclusion, upholding their respective revival provisions. In a single week in January and February 2025, the supreme courts of Maine, North Carolina, and Maryland all issued rulings on the question. Maine struck down its revival provision. North Carolina and Maryland upheld theirs.

The legal terrain is being decided state by state, case by case. A window that exists today may not survive a constitutional challenge tomorrow. This is not a reason for inaction.  In fact, it is a reason to act while windows are open.

What This Means Right Now

This is the most active period for survivor civil rights legislation in the history of the movement that SAAM represents. Multiple lookback windows are simultaneously open. Institutional defendants like government agencies, religious organizations, healthcare systems, hotels are being held accountable at a scale that was legally inconceivable 25 years ago. The $13 billion in cumulative settlements is not an abstraction; it is the measure of what civil litigation has achieved for survivors who were told for decades that their time had passed.

But the windows are not permanent. Courts are narrowing them. Legislatures are under pressure. The window open in your state today may be the last one.

On April 29, Denim Day, Constant Legal Group stands with survivors, advocates, and communities marking 25 years of this movement. But our work is not confined to April. If you were sexually abused by an individual or an institution and want to understand your current legal options, we offer free, confidential case evaluations, with no upfront cost and no fee unless we recover compensation for you.

Visit constantllp.com or call us today.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Contact Constant Legal Group for a confidential evaluation specific to your circumstances.