This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Sign up for Maryland Matters’ free email subscription today.
When you wake up Sunday, it will be harder to collect damages from the state for child sexual abuse and easier to find relief at a pick-your-own farm, new rules will start the long process of slowing utility rate increases and a new law will again delay the start of a paid family and medical leave program.
And chromite will be the official state mineral, a fact you can toast with the new official state cocktail, the orange crush.
Those are the most notable of just over 100 bills that became law on June 1, many of them duplicates. They range from local alcohol and bond bills to a severe retrenchment of a 2023 law on damages for victims of child sexual abuse that could have left the state open to billions in legal expenses.
It’s the first batch of the 849 bills from the 2025 General Assembly that have been signed into law, most of which will take effect on July 1 or Oct. 1.
But this first batch included some significant legislation, the most high-profile of which may have been House Bill 1378, which overhauls the Child Victims Act that passed to great fanfare just two years ago.
Racing to the courthouse to beat new law
Attorneys in and outside of Maryland spent the last week rushing to courthouses around the state to file claims for victims of institutional child sex abuse, working to beat the June 1 law that will cut potential awards in half and make it harder for victims to make multiple claims.
“Since this law was enacted by the legislature, even before the governor signed it, our firm has been devoting, — I’m not even exaggerating to say — probably about 80-plus percent of its time, energy efforts and resources, into getting these lawsuits filed,” said Emily Malarkey, a partner in the Baltimore firm Bekman, Marder, Hopper, Malarkey & Perlin.
In the last six weeks, Malarkey’s firm filed 50 lawsuits on behalf of 250 clients, just one firm among many representing potentially thousands of clients. One case came in at 10 p.m. Thursday, from an out-of-state firm that needed local attorneys to assist in filing.
“We’re exhausted,” Malarkey said. “It has been a Herculean effort, that was never our intended plan.”
Those numbers are part of what drove lawmakers to pass the bill dramatically limiting a two-year old law that allowed victims who were otherwise barred from suing because of time limits to file civil lawsuits. The 2023 law created a scenario in which state and local governments could be on the hook for billions in potential liabilities.
Under the old law, damages were capped at $1.5 million per “occurrence” of abuse in a lawsuit against a private institution such as a school or church. In cases involving government entities, the cap was $890,000 per occurrence.
The new law slashes the caps as of June 1 — to $700,000 for private institutions and $400,000 for public institutions. And the “per occurrence” language goes away.
Lawmakers rushed to address the issue after legislative analysts warned in January that, under the old caps and with the potential of more than one occurrence per claimant, the cost to settle more than 3,100 cases that had been filed at the time could run into the billions. That would be troubling in good economic times, but the January warning came as the state was looking at an existing $3.3 billion structural deficit for fiscal 2026 and a similarly sized one for fiscal 2027.
The new law not only has financial consequences for victims. It could also limit the number of future cases, as lawyers consider whether they can afford to take on clients under the new caps.
“After June 1, it’s going to be really hard, I think, to find good representation, because not only did the legislature cut the cap, but the legislature cut the attorney fees that can be charged,” Malarkey said. “It’s going to be very difficult for businesses like mine to handle these complex, expensive, difficult cases stemming from decades ago, with dead witnesses and lost documents on a 20% contingency fee. We just can’t do it.”
Thousands of cases are pending in Maryland courts.
Malarkey said the vast majority — cases against the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Department of Juvenile Services — will likely work their way through Baltimore City Circuit Courts. Prince George’s County courts will likely see the bulk of cases against from the Catholic Church’s Washington diocese. The rest, including cases against local schools and other institutions, will be heard in counties around the state.
What price power? New law doesn’t have quick answer
The Next Generation Energy Act that takes effect Sunday passed with just as much fanfare and will be felt by virtually every Marylander — but with none of the urgency of the Child Victims Act overhaul. The most immediate change, a rebate on people’s electric bills, won’t come before July.
In fact, the only noticeable change on June 1 is likely to be another increase in utility bills, while the law aimed at reining increases in grinds to life.
Senate Bill 937 and House Bill 1035 were part of a three-bill energy package touted by Democratic leaders in response to rising utility bills over the winter that blew up legislators’ phone lines and email inboxes with constituent complaints. The bills’ backers said the measures included short-, medium- and long-term solutions to complex issue of rising energy costs in Maryland.
The first change Marylanders will notice is the “Legislative Energy Relief Refund,” a credit averaging $80 per household that will be divided between bills next month and in January 2026. But the next round of rate increases is set to kick in after June 1.
Baltimore Gas & Electric customers got a break Thursday when the Maryland Public Service Commission ordered the utility to take next month’s expected $21 per month increase and spread it over several months, lowering the increase by $10 to $15 for the average household during the summer months. But rates will jump in September — overall, BGE customers will pay the same amount, but it will be spread out more evenly.
Customers of other utilities are likely to see increases between $4 and $18 per month, according to a report commissioned by the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel.
Meanwhile, most of the bill’s provisions will unfold farther into the future.
The law includes changes at the PSC meant to rein in utility spending, including on new natural gas infrastructure, and encourage the construction of new power sources and energy storage technology — all with the goal of slowing price increases for ratepayers.
It calls for the PSC to open a procurement window — in October — for generators of “dispatchable” energy, which must contribute a certain amount of reliable energy to the grid with lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal or oil, according to the bill. It could include new natural gas, an option that angered environmentalists. The PSC will open another procurement window in January, for battery storage technology.
Environmentalists were pleased that the bill removes a renewable energy subsidy from trash incinerators that generate power, long one of their goals.
Republican critics said the bill will do little to bolster in-state power generation, and blamed Democrats for driving fossil fuel power plants out of business and pushing costly clean energy policies on utilities. In fact, experts say the rate increases are caused by a combination of factors, from rising energy demand, to policies of regional electric grid operator PJM, to utilities pursuing overzealous improvements to the natural gas system.
Another bill in the Democrats’ package, which takes effect July 1, prevents local governments from banning large solar panel facilities through zoning. House Bill 1036/Senate Bill 931 raised concerns in farming communities, who worry that productive farmland could be lost to solar panels, but it’s not clear they will be able to meet a weekend deadline to petition it to referendum.
The final bill, to set up an energy planning office focused on the state’s long-term energy picture, was vetoed by Gov. Wes Moore (D), who said that other offices do that already and that it was too costly.
Delay for FAMLI, disappointment for immigrants
At least one new law does nothing — for another 18 months. The Family and Medical Leave Insurance program was supposed to start on July 1, but House Bill 102 defers the start of the program until Jan. 1, 2027. And that’s just the date when payroll deductions and employer contributions would start to be collected for the programs, benefits for someone who needed to take time off for a family issue of a health emergency would not start to be paid out until Jan. 1, 2028.
It is the third time the program start date has been pushed back since the FAMLI law was approved by lawmakers in 2022. Passage of the bill was a bitter pill for advocates, who said family emergencies can’t wait 18 months. Moore administration officials said the delay was unfortunate. But they also said that with the state facing a $3 billion budget deficit at the start of this year, and with continued uncertainty coming out of Washington under the Trump administration, another delay was the only prudent thing to do.
The Maryland Values Act, meanwhile, does something, but it’s a lot less than its backers had hoped. As drafted, House Bill 1222 would have prohibited “287(g)” agreements, under which local police can essentially act as immigration agents, detaining people on suspicion of immigration violations and holding them for federal agents. A handful of sheriff’s departments in the state have entered into 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Senators stripped out the 287(g) language from the House bill and the Senate was not budging as the clock ticked down on the session. With literally minutes left in the 2025 General Assembly session, the House relented.
The final version of the Maryland Values Act has nothing on 287(g) but does add protections against release of immigrants’ personal records and other data the state holds. It also includes language to help “sensitive locations” — churches, schools, hospitals and the like — respond should federal agents show up. Those locations had been off limits to immigration enforcement under the Biden administration, but that restriction was quickly lifted under the Trump administration.
Studying guns in schools, more
House Bill 782 requires a thorough assessment of guns in the state’s public high schools and middle schools, and report on the best way to detect the presence of guns in schools and the best way to report such information to police. The law will take effect just days after the first-degree murder conviction Friday of Jaylen Rushawn Prince, 16, in the shooting death of 15-year-old Warren Curtis Grant in a bathroom at Joppatowne High School on Sept. 6, 2024, according to news reports.
The bill, originally sponsored by Del. Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard), calls on the Maryland Center for School Safety, a unit within the Maryland Department of Education, to meet with members of every local school system in the state and evaluate the security infrastructure currently in place. The center will also be required to evaluate “widely accepted” methods that are available but not currently used by school systems, analyze software that can be integrated with security cameras and study the use of metal detectors, even handheld devices, at school entrances.
The center will have to present an interim report to legislative leaders as well as to the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee by Dec. 1, 2025. A final report would be due by Dec. 1, 2026.
Other bills that become laws June 1 include:
- Senate Bill 376 will require the Maryland Department of Health to regularly report to the legislature on the progress it has made to reduce a significant backlog of required annual nursing home inspections. Under the new law, the department will need to start providing quarterly reports to lawmakers on the progress of nursing home inspections, and the Office of Health Care Quality will have to report to local jurisdictions every six months on the progress of inspections in their individual counties.
- Motorists using Interestate 83 in Baltimore will have to watch their speeds. House Bill 913, passed earlier this year, authorizes doubling the number of automated speed-monitoring devices on the city portion of the highway from two to four cameras.
- For bills that ended up passing both chambers unanimously, lawmakers spent an inordinate amount of floor time — and offered an inordinate number of bad puns — for Senate Bill 544 and House Bill 559, the agritourism porta-potty bills. When the new law takes effect June 1, it will allow certain wineries, farm breweries and farms engaged in “agritourism” — like pick-your-own fields and corn mazes — to meet the requirement for on-site lavatory facilities by providing portable toilets with soap and water and located at least 25 feet from any wells.
And finally … chromite! And an orange crush
Two new state symbols — an official state mineral and a cocktail — join the list of about two dozen that includes official state sports, dogs, cats and dinosaurs, among others.
Chromite, a commercially valuable mineral first discovered in Baltimore County in the early 1800s, has become the official state mineral with the enactment of House Bill 411. The effort was a passion project for David Shore, who first testified on the bill nearly a decade ago. Now, at age 18, Shore’s effort not only passed the House and Senate but landed on the desk of the governor.
And the rising tide for chromite lifted another state symbol effort.
In the waning hours of the 2025 session, a bill making the orange crush — a vodka and juice drink invented in Ocean City — the official state cocktail was going nowhere. But as lawmakers were finishing their work, a late amendment in the House added Orange Crush to Senate Bill 764, the Senate’s version of the chromite bill. Senators concurred before the final gavel fell, and Maryland got an official state cocktail to go with its official mineral.
