Another court must now decide how the landmark ruling will impact the Boy Scouts abuse settlement, which involves victims of police sexual abuse.

Scouting America, formerly the Boy Scouts of America, was one of the organizations closely watching the court’s decision.

In 2020, the Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and later agreed to a nearly $2.5 billion settlement to compensate more than 82,000 victims of alleged sexual abuse. A central part of the reorganization plan shielded local councils, schools and churches that hosted or ran its programming from future lawsuits alleging harm.

In an amicus brief supporting Purdue Pharma’s position, the nonprofit Scouting organization argued that the release of these parties from liability — without the consent of everyone suing them — is essential to its reorganization. Scouting America also says it is too far along in its settlement process to make major revisions. The majority of claimants agreed to the settlement plan, while a small percentage appealed it, saying it stops them from pursuing lawsuits against the parties that aren’t bankrupt.

Unlike Purdue Pharma, though, the Scouts are a nonprofit organization. Whereas the Sackler family heavily profited from the company, the same is not true for all parties that have volunteered for or hosted Scouts programming. And while Purdue’s settlement plan has been on hold pending the court’s ruling, the Scouts have already begun paying some of its settlements.

But there were parties on the Scouts’ release list that surprised me: police departments.

In May, my colleagues and I reported on the Scouts’ troubled law enforcement Explorer program. Created by the Scouts decades ago to allow more girls in its programming, Explorers is a co-ed mentorship program run by police departments across the country. We identified nearly 200 allegations that law enforcement officers — mostly male — sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with participants. The majority of the victims were teenage girls, some as young as 13 years old.

It’s now up to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals to decide if and how the Supreme Court’s decision applies to Scouting America.

“Right now, litigation against police departments is not possible because the Boy Scouts’ plan is still in place and is going forward until the appellate court rules otherwise,” says Gilion Dumas, an attorney who represents victims alleging abuse who appealed the Scouts settlement plan. “We believe the court will overturn the BSA plan, making litigation against police departments possible.”

She says a continuation of the current Scouting America plan would be “grossly unfair” to victims.

Some attorneys are also eyeing how the ruling might affect the use of a controversial legal process known as the Texas Two-Step.

As Reuters explains: “It involves splitting a company in two, dumping the legal liability into one of the entities, and then putting that new firm into bankruptcy. Companies love it. Plaintiffs’ attorneys hate it. Judges so far seem split on it.”

The process in and of itself is legal, but it raises some of the same issues of consent for plaintiffs found in the Scouting and Purdue cases.