A judge tonight rejected an attempt by the Archdiocese of Boston to use the First Amendment to shield it from more than 400 lawsuits claiming sexual abuse by priests.
Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney said in the ruling that the clergy sex abuse lawsuits can continue.
The ruling also clears the way for more intense settlement talks between lawyers for the victims and the archdiocese.
The Boston Archdiocese, home to about 2.1 million Catholics, argued that the separation of church and state prevented civil courts from making judgments on how it supervised priests.
The archdiocese made the claim, in part, to satisfy insurance carriers that it was making an exhaustive legal effort to avoid big-ticket judgments.
The archdiocese did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Over the past year, the clergy sexual abuse scandal has reverberated from Boston to Rome, and forced Cardinal Bernard Law to resign as Boston archbishop.
The archdiocese, under Law's leadership, is accused of ignoring reports that priests were sexually abusing children and of shuttling suspected pedophiles from parish to parish without alerting the public.