Supreme Court Ends Final Challenge to Boy Scouts Abuse Bankruptcy Deal

Tens of thousands of men who say they were molested as Boy Scouts woke up Jan. 12 to a single line from the nation’s highest court.

Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the last major challenge to the Boy Scouts of America’s bankruptcy reorganization, leaving in place a $2.46 billion settlement trust for survivors of child sexual abuse and effectively closing the door on further appeals.

The order means that roughly $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion from insurers, which had been sitting in escrow while the case wound its way through the courts, can now be transferred to the Boy Scouts’ Settlement Trust. It also cements a legally controversial deal that shields local scouting councils, churches and other sponsoring organizations from future lawsuits—using tools the Supreme Court has since said may not be used in new cases.

The Boy Scouts, which rebranded as Scouting America in 2025, called the Supreme Court’s action a turning point.

“With today’s action by the U.S. Supreme Court, Scouting America’s Plan of Reorganization is now final and irrevocable, and the Settlement Trust … can now expedite the payment of compensation to survivors of historical abuse,” the organization said in a statement issued Jan. 12.

For many survivors, the order is likely to mean larger checks and an end to years of legal uncertainty. For a smaller group who opposed the plan, it extinguishes their last realistic chance to sue local councils and churches in open court.

A massive settlement, and a one-line order

The justices’ decision came in Lujan Claimants v. Boy Scouts of America, et al., No. 25-490, a petition filed by a group of abuse survivors largely represented by Guam-based lawyer Leander “Lee” Lujan. They sought review of a May 2025 ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that left the Boy Scouts’ Chapter 11 plan largely intact.

The Supreme Court denied certiorari on Jan. 12, listing the case on its orders sheet with no explanation and no noted dissents. That is routine; the court rarely explains why it declines to hear a case. But in practical terms, it ended the last meaningful appellate challenge to the Boy Scouts’ reorganization.

The plan at issue creates a trust of about $2.46 billion to compensate tens of thousands of people who say they were abused in Scouting programs, many decades ago. The money comes from a mix of sources: insurers, the national scouting organization, about 250 local councils, and chartered organizations such as churches and civic groups that historically sponsored Scout units.

The trust, overseen by retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara J. Houser, has been operating since 2023. As of late last year, it had distributed more than $295 million to nearly 37,000 survivors, typically as partial, first-round payments while litigation over insurance and appeals continued.

The Supreme Court’s order allows the trust to access more than $1.6 billion from insurance settlements that had been frozen until the plan became final, potentially increasing payouts in subsequent distribution rounds.

How bankruptcy became the forum for a child abuse reckoning

The Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware in February 2020. At that point, the organization was facing a surge of lawsuits after several states temporarily lifted statutes of limitation for childhood sexual abuse claims.

By the November 2020 deadline set in the bankruptcy case, more than 82,000 individuals had filed claims alleging abuse connected to Scouting—one of the largest aggregations of sex-abuse claims in U.S. history.

The bankruptcy allowed the Boy Scouts to halt ongoing lawsuits and negotiate a global resolution. In 2022, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein confirmed a plan that created the Settlement Trust and granted broad legal releases to hundreds of related entities in exchange for their contributions.

Those entities include local councils that own most Scout camps and facilities, major insurers that issued general liability policies over decades, and religious organizations such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Roman Catholic dioceses and the United Methodist Church.

The plan took effect in 2023, and the Boy Scouts emerged from bankruptcy. On Feb. 8, 2025, the organization formally adopted the new name Scouting America. It has pointed to expanded youth-protection policies, the inclusion of girls and LGBTQ members, and the rebranding itself as evidence of a “new era” for the movement.

Who pays—and how much survivors get

Despite the headline number, the money survivors ultimately receive is far less than the total face value of their claims.

The largest share of the $2.46 billion trust comes from insurers, which collectively agreed to pay about $1.65 billion to resolve historical coverage disputes, subject to the plan becoming final. Two of the biggest settlements came from Hartford Financial Services Group, which agreed to pay $787 million, and Century/Chubb, which committed roughly $800 million.

Local councils agreed to contribute an estimated $400 million to $515 million, largely by selling or mortgaging camps and other property and assigning their rights under certain insurance policies. The national organization itself is contributing about $220 million in cash and property.

Chartered organizations, which include churches and civic groups that hosted units and in some cases recruited adult leaders, are also contributing hundreds of millions collectively in return for protection from future abuse claims arising from Scouting.

At the same time, the trust has billed non-settling insurers for billions of dollars more in alleged coverage, according to court filings. Those companies dispute both liability and the amounts, and that litigation is expected to last for years.

With claims valued at several times the money currently in the trust, payouts are being heavily discounted. According to trust reports and court filings, initial distributions have typically been about 1.5% to 2% of the scheduled value assigned to each claim under the trust’s matrix, which takes into account the severity of abuse, age, duration, and state law. The trust has said it expects to make additional rounds of payments as more money becomes available.

More than 6,000 survivors have opted for an expedited cash payment of $3,500 each, a choice designed for people who prefer speed and certainty over potentially larger but delayed awards.

Critics of the plan note that the Boy Scouts’ direct contribution to the trust is smaller than the more than $300 million the organization has spent on legal and professional fees in the bankruptcy case, according to court records and trust reporting.

A deal that survives under rules that have changed

The most contentious feature of the Boy Scouts’ plan has been its use of non-debtor releases—provisions that bar survivors from suing entities that never filed for bankruptcy themselves.

In this case, those releases protect local councils, chartered organizations and insurers that contributed to the trust. Survivors covered by the plan cannot file new lawsuits against those entities over historical abuse in Scouting, even in states that passed laws reviving old claims.

The Lujan Claimants and other objecting survivor groups argued that these releases violated the Bankruptcy Code and their due-process rights, particularly after the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P.

In that case—often referred to simply as Purdue Pharma—the court held that Chapter 11 does not authorize nonconsensual third-party releases that shield non-debtors from civil liability, except where Congress has expressly allowed them, such as in asbestos cases. The ruling was widely interpreted as a rejection of broad immunity deals like the one the Sackler family sought in the Purdue opioid bankruptcy.

The 3rd Circuit, however, declined to strike down the Boy Scouts’ plan on that basis. In a May 13, 2025 opinion, the court acknowledged that if the plan were being proposed after Purdue, it would not be confirmable in its current form because of the non-debtor releases.

But the majority concluded that it was too late to unwind the deal. The court held that appeals challenging key parts of the plan were barred by Section 363(m) of the Bankruptcy Code, a provision that limits appellate courts’ power to disturb completed sales of a debtor’s assets made in good faith. In the Boy Scouts case, that asset was a court-approved “buyback” of certain insurance policies.

Because that transaction had closed without a stay, the 3rd Circuit said, appeals that could affect it were statutorily moot, leaving the releases and much of the plan intact.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Marjorie Rendell criticized aspects of the majority’s reasoning and warned that the use of Section 363(m) risked becoming an “end run” around the Supreme Court’s ruling in Purdue Pharma. She agreed that the appeals should be dismissed, but on the alternative ground of equitable mootness, another doctrine that discourages courts from unraveling substantially consummated plans.

By turning away the Lujan Claimants’ petition, the Supreme Court left the 3rd Circuit’s approach undisturbed without endorsing it. The justices have not revisited the question of non-debtor releases since Purdue, and their brief order in the Boy Scouts case provides no hint of their views on how that decision should apply to already-implemented plans.

Relief for some, finality for all

Reactions among survivors have been mixed.

Lawyers who negotiated and supported the plan on behalf of large groups of claimants said the Supreme Court’s action offers long-delayed certainty and unlocks money that had been held back for years.

“For our clients, this means the trust can finally deliver on the promise of this settlement,” one attorney who supported the plan said in a statement after the order. “Survivors have waited long enough.”

For the Lujan Claimants and others who opposed the plan, the denial is a bitter result. They argued that the bankruptcy process deprived them of the chance to use state “look-back” laws to sue local councils, dioceses and other sponsoring organizations in open court, and that the trust’s payments would never match what juries in some jurisdictions have awarded in serious abuse cases.

The legal fights are not entirely over. The Settlement Trust is still pursuing claims against non-settling insurers, and the total amount survivors ultimately receive will depend in part on the outcome of those cases and on how the trustees decide to allocate funds in future distribution rounds.

But the core structure of the Boy Scouts deal—a national trust funded largely by insurers and shielded by third-party releases—is now fixed.

In the years since the Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy, the Supreme Court has narrowed the tools available for similar mass settlements in new cases. That leaves this deal in a unique position: a vast, imperfect resolution of decades of abuse that was built under one legal regime and preserved under another, offering money and closure to many survivors while ensuring that the model used to create it is unlikely to be repeated.