A federal judge on Monday rejected an effort by WWE, its parent company TKO, Vince McMahon, and current U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, to have the ring boy lawsuit dismissed because of the argument that a Maryland law the case was brought under violates the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar ruled that the law is constitutional as applied to the case. The lawsuit may now move forward toward the discovery phase, where depositions are conducted, and evidence is exchanged. A teleconference is set for November 17 to set future deadlines. The case would still be at least several months away from a potential trial.
Monday’s ruling does not address whether the alleged abuse happened or whether the defendants are responsible for it.
POST Wrestling requested comments from WWE, TKO, and the McMahons. They did not immediately respond to our inquiry, including to a question about whether they plan to appeal Bredar’s decision.
The plaintiffs in the case are seven men who were minors when they say they were sexually abused in the 1980s and 1990s while setting up WWE (then the WWF) rings or running other errands. All seven allege abuse by former ring announcer Mel Phillips. One also alleges abuse by former WWE executive Pat Patterson, and another alleges sexual harassment against former executive Terry Garvin. Phillips, Patterson, and Garvin all died years before the lawsuit was brought to court. The plaintiffs allege that the McMahons and the company they formerly led were negligent in allowing the abuse to happen. The defendants have denied the central claims of the case.
The ring boys also overcame an earlier motion to dismiss in May, which narrowed the number of plaintiffs from eight to seven. Claims by two of the plaintiffs remain against Linda McMahon, while all seven proceed against Vince McMahon, WWE, and TKO. All the plaintiffs are anonymized under “John Doe” pseudonyms.
In 2023, Maryland passed the Child Victims Act, which eliminated any time limits for filing civil lawsuits related to child sexual abuse. If not for the new law, the statute of limitations on the plaintiffs’ claims would have expired years ago. The former ring boys allege they were abused in a variety of states but, importantly, they all claim that some of the abuse they were subjected to happened in Maryland.
Maryland’s state-level Supreme Court upheld the Act in 2025, ruling that the law was valid under the state’s constitution, allowing this and other cases to move forward. But the defendants’ recent challenge was based on arguments related to the U.S. Constitution, which the Maryland Supreme Court decision couldn’t address, but which Monday’s ruling by Judge Bredar did.
Bredar, however, is a federal judge at the district level. The defendants could eventually try to appeal his ruling to the higher appellate court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The defendants had argued that because the alleged abuse took place roughly 40 years ago, it’s too difficult to litigate the case. In court filings, they pointed to the fact that Phillips, Patterson, and Garvin have all died. They also pointed to the passing of Tom Cole, a former ring attendant who was among the earliest to allege he was subject to abuse and sexual harassment, when the scandal first came to light in 1992. Others with secondhand knowledge, including Vince McMahon’s father, Vincent J. McMahon, have also died many years prior. Because of these factors, the defendants said that forcing them to go forward with the case was a violation of their constitutional rights under the part of the Fourteenth Amendment related to due process.
In this context, a right to due process refers to a guarantee that people have under the Fourteenth Amendment, to not have their rights violated by unfair or arbitrary laws. WWE and the McMahons argued that Maryland did that by taking away their protection from these lawsuits by removing the time limit for bringing such cases to court.
In his ruling, Bredar said the U.S. Constitution gives states broad power over lawsuit deadlines. A deadline to sue is a rule set by lawmakers, in this instance, the Maryland state legislature. And lawmakers can change those deadlines, Bredar ruled, even for very old claims. A court can strike down a change like this only if the change serves no purpose.
The defendants did not “show how their particular hardships make the [Maryland Child Victims Act] arbitrary or irrational,” Bredar wrote. Instead, the defendants were trying to “hold the [Maryland] legislature to a stricter standard than is required under the Due Process Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Bredar cited the Maryland Supreme Court’s earlier finding in 2025 that the law addressed a specific problem: “that many individuals do not disclose abuse until well into adulthood but still suffer life-long emotional, psychological, and physical health issues resulting from the abuse.”
Concluding his 26-page order, Bredar acknowledged that it will be difficult to gather evidence for this case. “And it may be hard for Defendants to muster an effective defense where evidence is stale, memories are frail, and witnesses are deceased,” he wrote. “But the Court’s role here is to interpret the United States Constitution and to resolve disputes that arise under it.”
“The Maryland General Assembly created its statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims and, in response to a legitimate and pressing issue, decided to alter it in a rational way,” the judge added.
