Track

Status

Governing provision

The elimination, in full — 18 U.S.C. § 3299: “Notwithstanding any other law, an indictment may be found or an information instituted at any time without limitation for any offense under section 1201 involving a minor victim, and for any felony under chapter 109A, 110 (except for section 2257 and 2257A), or 117, or section 1591.” 

The coverage is by chapter, not by section, which makes it comprehensive. Chapter 109A is sexual abuse — §§ 2241 to 2248, including aggravated sexual abuse of a child. Chapter 110 is sexual exploitation and other abuse of children — §§ 2251 to 2260A, including production, distribution, receipt and possession of child sexual abuse material. Chapter 117 is transportation for illegal sexual activity — §§ 2421 to 2429, including the Mann Act offenses and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. Section 1591 is sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud or coercion; § 1201 is kidnapping. 

Two sections are carved out, and they are recordkeeping offenses rather than abuse offenses — §§ 2257 and 2257A require producers of sexually explicit material to keep and make available records of performers’ ages. Their exclusion from § 3299 does not leave any childhood sexual abuse offense on a deadline. The statute’s own footnote records a drafting slip in the carve-out: “So in original. Probably should be ‘sections’.” 

And the residual is not really a deadline either — 18 U.S.C. § 3283: “No statute of limitations that would otherwise preclude prosecution for an offense involving the sexual or physical abuse, or kidnaping, of a child under the age of 18 years shall preclude such prosecution during the life of the child, or for ten years after the offense, whichever is longer.” For a living survivor the period is her lifetime. Section 3283 reaches offenses outside the chapters named in § 3299 — including physical abuse, which § 3299 does not cover at all. 

The two sections together are the most complete criminal elimination in this dataset. Section 3299 covers the sexual offenses categorically; § 3283 catches anything else involving the sexual or physical abuse or kidnapping of a child and gives it the survivor’s lifetime. There is no childhood offense left on a fixed period, which is not true of any state examined in this review. 

“No deadline” is correct. It is worth recording why the federal position is cleaner than every state’s: Congress drafted by chapter rather than by section list, so the gap this review found repeatedly — a contact offense or a child sexual abuse material offense omitted from the unlimited list — cannot open. Only the Northern Mariana Islands, which drafts by conduct rather than by list, achieves the same completeness.

18 U.S.C. § 3299 — Legal Information Institute, official U.S. Code text 

18 U.S.C. § 3283 — Legal Information Institute, official U.S. Code text

The rule, in full — 18 U.S.C. § 2255(b): “There shall be no time limit for the filing of a complaint commencing an action under this section.” Nine words, and the shortest civil elimination in the dataset. 

Who may sue — § 2255(a): “Any person who, while a minor, was a victim of a violation of section 1589, 1590, 1591, 2241(c), 2242, 2243, 2251, 2251A, 2252, 2252A, 2260, 2421, 2422, or 2423 of this title and who suffers personal injury as a result of such violation, regardless of whether the injury occurred while such person was a minor, may sue in any appropriate United States District Court.” 

Statutory damages floor no state matches § 2255(a): the plaintiff “shall recover the actual damages such person sustains or liquidated damages in the amount of $150,000, and the cost of the action, including reasonable attorney’s fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred. The court may also award punitive damages and such other preliminary and equitable relief as the court determines to be appropriate.” Liquidated damages of $150,000 are available without proof of loss. Set against Rhode Island’s $100,000 ceiling on claims against the State and Maryland’s $400,000 and $700,000 caps, the federal provision runs in the opposite direction from the state trend this review has found. 

Venue and service are made easy § 2255(c)(1): an action may be brought in any district court meeting the venue requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 1391. § 2255(c)(2): process may be served in any district in which the defendant is an inhabitant or may be found. 

The civil list is narrower than the criminal one, and the difference matters. Section 2255(a) names fourteen sections; § 3299 covers three whole chapters. Conduct that is a federal crime with no limitation may nonetheless fall outside § 2255 — for example an offense under chapter 117 other than §§ 2421, 2422 or 2423. A survivor whose case rests on such conduct has no federal civil claim under this section at all, whatever the deadline. 

“No deadline” is correct and this is the reform the tracker already records: “Federal | S. 3103 (Pub. L. 117-176) | 2022 — eff. 16 Sep 2022 | Eliminated the federal civil SOL for child sex-abuse claims (‘no time limit’) | Civil | 18 U.S.C. §2255(b)”. What the row does not carry is the $150,000 liquidated damages floor, which is the second half of what makes the federal remedy distinctive.

18 U.S.C. § 2255 — Legal Information Institute, official U.S. Code text

Section 2255(b) says only that there shall be no time limit. It contains no applicability provision, no effective-date qualification and no reach-back language of the kind Vermont, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and West Virginia use. 

The question is therefore whether the amendment operates on claims already barred when it took effect on 16 September 2022. Before Pub. L. 117-176, § 2255(b) gave ten years from the later of the injury or the survivor’s eighteenth birthday. A survivor abused in 1990 was out of time long before 2022; whether the new subsection revives her claim depends on ordinary principles of federal statutory retroactivity, and there is no answer on the face of the section. 

This has been litigated in the federal courts and none of it was retrieved for this page. Nothing is asserted about the outcome. The honest position is that the federal revival entry cannot be stated from the statutory text alone, and this review does not state it. 

What can be said is what the structure suggests, and it is only a suggestion. The 2022 Act is titled the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, which is language of elimination rather than of revival; Congress used explicit revival language in other contexts and did not use it here. That is a reason to be cautious about assuming retroactivity, not a basis for concluding against it. 

The tracker has no federal row in the interactive map, so there is no existing revival value to check. If a federal row is added — see the open questions below — the revival field should not be filled in until the retroactivity question has been researched properly. Filling it with “None” would assert something this review cannot support; filling it with a revival value would assert the opposite.

18 U.S.C. § 2255(b) — Legal Information Institute, official U.S. Code text