WWE, McMahons must face sex abuse claims by former 'ring boys'

By Daniel Wiessner

Oct 20 (Reuters) - A federal judge has denied a bid by World Wrestling Entertainment and former executives Vince and Linda McMahon to dismiss a lawsuit claiming they are liable for years of alleged sexual abuse suffered by teenage "ring boys" in the 1980s and 1990s.

US District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore on Monday rejected claims that a 2023 Maryland law allowing the plaintiffs to sue over decades-old allegations violated the US Constitution and the defendants' right to due process.

The eight anonymous plaintiffs say in the 2024 lawsuit that they were recruited by ringside announcer Melvin Phillips to work as part-time crew members and were abused by him and two other officials at WWE, then known as WWF. Phillips and the other alleged abusers died years before the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit.

WWE and lawyers for Vince McMahon and Linda McMahon, the current US Secretary of Education, and the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The Maryland law eliminated a seven-year statute of limitations for sex abuse claims involving minors, which had been extended from three years in 2003. It was part of a wave of state laws adopted after the #MeToo movement allowing sex abuse claims previously blocked by statutes of limitations to proceed, in some cases temporarily.

The plaintiffs in their lawsuit accused WWE and the McMahons of negligence and negligent hiring and retention, and are seeking unspecified damages.

Vince McMahon, who built WWF into a cultural force in the 1980s after purchasing its predecessor from his father, resigned from the organization in 2024 amid separate claims of sex trafficking and assault, which he has denied.

Linda McMahon, his estranged wife, was appointed US Secretary of Education by President Donald Trump last year after heading the US Small Business Administration during Trump's first term. She and Vince McMahon have previously denied having knowledge of alleged abuse of ring boys.

The defendants argued that Maryland's law violated the US Constitution's ban on retroactive, or ex post facto, laws, and that it violated the Constitution's guarantee of due process as applied to them. They said it could be difficult or impossible to mount a defense as witnesses become unavailable, memories fade and other evidence is lost.

But Bredar on Monday said the law served a legitimate purpose of addressing the barriers that child sex abuse victims face in court, and that the concerns raised by WWE were overblown.

"Plaintiffs can make a case by producing at least some material facts to contest, documents to dispute, and witnesses to cross-examine," the judge wrote.

The Maryland Supreme Court last year rejected arguments that the law violated the state's constitution, which Bredar on Monday said had raised distinct issues from the former ring boys' case.

But the top courts in several other states including Maine, Utah and Kentucky have said in recent years that similar laws were invalid because expired statutes of limitations are not reversible.

The case is Doe v. World Wrestling Entertainment, US District Court for the District of Maryland, No. 1:24-cv-03487.

For the plaintiffs: William Murphy of Murphy Falcon & Murphy; Adam Prom and others from DiCello Levitt

For WWE: Daniel Toal and others from Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison; Linda Woolf of Goodell DeVries Leech & Dann

For Vince McMahon: Christopher Jeffries of Kramon & Graham

For Linda McMahon: William Murphy and Samantha Kavanagh of Zuckerman Spaeder

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