In 1991, the Maryland Catholic Conference lobbied lawmakers for the right to file retroactive lawsuits against those who built Catholic schools using asbestos.

The conference, the Catholic Church’s lobbying arm for the three dioceses that operate in Maryland, felt it was fair and necessary for the church to be able to sue builders, or else the financial burden to fix the asbestos problem would be “daunting.”

“Having legal recourse available is essential,” wrote Richard J. Bowling, then the Catholic conference’s executive director, in a letter to the House judiciary chair.

The legislature ultimately passed that bill, which altered what’s known as a “statute of repose” and gave public and private entities a brief period, known as a “lookback window,” to file retroactive lawsuits against builders who used asbestos, with claims eligible to go back decades.

In the present day, survivors of sexual assault are urging lawmakers to pass the Child Victims Act, which would open a lookback window for their claims. The bill has repeatedly failed to pass the Senate in recent years, but the state attorney general’s office has completed a four-year investigation into the history of child sex abuse and its cover-up in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. The 456-page report, which details incidents of abuse going back eight decades, has not been made public.

However, the Catholic Church suggests the same legal avenue it sought in 1991 should now be considered unconstitutional, with the Maryland Catholic Conference citing a letter from the attorney general’s office that questions whether lookback windows are permissible under the Maryland Constitution.

Democratic Sen. Will Smith chairs the Judicial Proceedings Committee and will hold a hearing on the Child Victims Act at 1 p.m. Thursday. Smith supports a version of the act that would include a limit on how much money could be awarded to a plaintiff when they sue private entities. However, Smith has expressed concern that any law containing a lookback window would be subject to legal challenges regarding its constitutionality.

Kathleen Hoke, a law professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, uncovered a 1990 letter to lawmakers from the attorney general’s office that determined lookback windows are constitutional.

Asked Wednesday whether Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown had a stance on the constitutionality of the Child Victims Act, or whether the office erred in its 1990 letter, a spokeswoman declined to comment.

“The attorney general has not weighed in on this bill,” the spokeswoman wrote in an email.

Hoke, who has testified repeatedly in recent years about the sexual abuse bill, said she thinks the old attorney general’s letter she uncovered would suggest the issue might be less hotly contested.

“This certainly pushes things in the direction of [constitutionality],” Hoke said. “The General Assembly has done it before.”

Maryland Catholic Conference spokeswoman Susan Gibbs issued a statement in December saying the three dioceses — Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware — would support a bill that removed the statute of limitations for new lawsuits, but not for retroactive lawsuits, claiming the attorney general’s office had found them unconstitutional.

The conference spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to lobby against the Child Victims Act, and has hired former Gov. Martin O’Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese and former Sen. Robert “Bobby” Zirkin for what appears to be the same purpose this year, according to publicly available lobbying registrations.

Gibbs did not respond to questions about whether the Maryland Catholic Conference would change its stance on the legislation, given the existence of the 1990 letter and that it supported a similar effort in 1991. Should this year’s bill pass, the archdioceses are among the parties expected to fight it in court.

“When they were injured because they had buildings that had asbestos in them, they thought it was constitutional and fair and good public policy to allow them to sue people who put asbestos in them,” Hoke said of the Catholic Church. “Now that it’s their finances on the line, they don’t think it’s constitutional.”

At least 24 other states, and the District of Columbia, have passed laws removing statutes of limitations, according to figures from CHILD USAdvocacy,a nonprofit working to end child abuse and neglect. In neighboring Delaware, which passed its lookback law in 2007, the Wilmington diocese was forced to declare bankruptcy due to the expected damages.

The Wilmington Diocese ended up paying more than $77 million in settlements as a result of that law.

But Maryland would be the only state to pass a law with a cap on damages for retroactive lawsuits, according to CHILD USAdvocacy. Currently, the bill sets the cap at $1.5 million per lawsuit.

Kurt Rupprecht, an abuse survivor who grew up in Salisbury, regularly meets with lawmakers on this issue and said he believes the church has pushed for the cap on damages. Even though the cap is unlikely to be removed, Rupprecht said he and other survivors still would view the bill’s passage as a victory.

“It is the best we’re going to do under the circumstances in Maryland,” Rupprecht said. “It is most important for us to have our day in court as survivors and most importantly to provide these protections for others going forward. We’ve been accustomed to great disappointments and heartbreaks in the past, and if we can achieve this reform with these compromises in place, so be it.”