J.H. v. Warren Hills Board of Education

Summary

The New Jersey Supreme Court held that the Child Victims Act's removal of the Child Sexual Abuse Act's 'within the household' requirement for passive abuser liability is a substantive amendment that applies only prospectively, to acts of sexual abuse committed on or after December 1, 2019. Applying the two-part retroactivity test, the Court found the Legislature expressly intended prospective application through N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2c's effective-date language and the Senate Judiciary Committee Statement, and that the amendment was neither ameliorative nor curative nor the subject of reasonable party expectations of retroactivity. The Court therefore reversed the Appellate Division, which had allowed plaintiff's pre-2019 abuse claim against his former school to proceed under the amended CSAA.