Your Old Settlement Might Not Be as Confidential as You Think

Seven states have enacted a version of Trey’s Law, and a federal bill has passed the U.S. Senate. Those laws prevent settlement agreements in child abuse claims from requiring confidentiality. Every version voids a nondisclosure clause to the extent it prohibits disclosure of child sexual abuse or facts related to it. Most of them leave settlement-amount confidentiality intact. None of them leave your organization’s history of claims as safe as you might wish.

The Case Behind the Statute

Lawmakers named these statutes for Trey Carlock. A camp counselor abused him for years. A jury later convicted the counselor, and a judge sentenced him to multiple life terms in prison. When Carlock settled his civil suit against the camp, the insurance company insisted on a nondisclosure clause.

According to his sister, Elizabeth Phillips, that clause reached far enough to keep Carlock from discussing his abuse even with his own therapist. She has said that a few days before his suicide in 2019, he told his therapist he would always be controlled and would never be free. She has attributed that statement to the NDA.

Legislators drafted the provision voiding a confidentiality clause “to the extent it prohibits disclosure of the abuse” directly against the fact pattern Phillips describes. That is an NDA broad enough to reach therapeutic disclosure, not merely public statements. Every version of this bill states that purpose explicitly in its findings section. That legislative history points toward a broad construction, not a narrow one.

What the Statutes Do

The operative language is consistent across jurisdictions. A nondisclosure, confidentiality, employment, settlement, or other agreement is void and unenforceable to the extent it prohibits disclosure of an act of child sexual abuse or facts related to that act. A 2025 Texas law, a 2025 Missouri law, a 2026 Alabama law, a 2026 Georgia law, and a 2026 Louisiana law all use this same void-to-the-extent structure. The federal bill working its way through the U.S. Congress mirrors it.

None of these statutes void an entire settlement agreement. The void reaches only the clause silencing the abuse itself and facts related to it. Other terms in the same agreement, including payment terms, generally survive.

The Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana law explicitly apply retroactively to all settlements for childhood sexual abuse claims, no matter when the parties signed the agreements.  I fully expect to see challenges to those retroactivity provisions.  Until the courts decide the question, however, every settlement your organization has entered into in those states can no longer prevent claimants from talking about the facts underlying their claims.

The Amount of Settlement

The Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and federal laws each include express language stating that settlements can keep the payment amount confidential.  All four state that nothing in the statute prohibits parties from agreeing to keep the settlement amount or payment terms confidential.

The Alabama law reaches the same practical result through different drafting. It states that its void rule applies solely to elements of an agreement related to the abuse itself. It does not apply to other aspects of the agreement, including compensation. The effect matches the affirmative carve-out used elsewhere: compensation confidentiality remains enforceable. The statute simply gets there by exclusion rather than by express permission.

The Missouri law contains neither approach. Its text voids the nondisclosure agreement without qualification and says nothing about settlement amounts one way or the other. That phrasing leaves the question open, and I found no case law or legislative history resolving it. Advise clients under Missouri law conservatively until courts weigh in.

The Underappreciated Exposure: Scope of “Facts Related To”

Every statute pairs “an act of sexual abuse” with “facts related to an act of sexual abuse.” The second phrase is broader, and no court in any of these jurisdictions has construed it yet. On the plain text, and consistent with the legislative history described above, the phrase plausibly reaches whether an organization had prior notice, complaints, or warnings about the individual involved. It plausibly reaches how the organization responded to those prior red flags as well.

This matters most for institutions with a documented pattern predating the settled claim. A settlement’s confidentiality terms sometimes function, even in part, to prevent disclosure of an earlier complaint or a known pattern. That kind of settlement appears to sit squarely within the language of the various statutes. 

The principle applies even more strongly in retroactive states.  Opposing counsel in Texas, Georgia, or Louisiana has a strong textual and legislative-history argument that a survivor can now disclose that history regardless of the settlement’s original terms.

The outer boundary of the phrase is genuinely untested. Whether it reaches the substance of settlement negotiations, internal legal strategy, or unrelated institutional misconduct is an open question a court has not yet answered. Counsel should not assume a narrow construction will hold, given the breadth of legislative intent expressed across every version of this bill.

What This Means for Your Organization

If you are in a state that has or is considering a Trey’s Law, you can take some practical steps now:

1. Review every existing settlement involving an abuse allegation for two distinct risks, not one. First, identify which jurisdiction’s law governs and whether that jurisdiction voids the confidentiality clause retroactively. Second, and more consequentially, identify whether the settlement’s confidentiality terms were doing any work to obscure a prior complaint or pattern involving the same individual. That second category carries the more serious institutional exposure, and it is not resolved simply because the settlement amount stays confidential.
2. Do not send a cease-and-desist letter, or otherwise threaten enforcement, against a survivor disclosing abuse or related facts. Enforcing that clause likely accomplishes nothing legally, and the letter itself may create independent liability and reputational exposure.
3. Where amount confidentiality remains enforceable, structure new settlement agreements to separate that clause clearly from any language touching disclosure of the abuse or related facts. A single omnibus confidentiality clause invites a court to void more than the statute requires.
4. Advise clients under Missouri’s statute that amount confidentiality is not guaranteed the way it is under the other four enacted state laws. Draft accordingly until case law or an amendment resolves the gap.
5. Watch the federal bill. It passed the Senate unanimously in May 2026 and currently sits in the House Judiciary Committee with no scheduled action as of this writing. Its final scope, including how the House treats the amount carve-out and the “facts related to” language, is not yet settled.

The Bottom Line

The statutory structure is more consistent across states than most laws. States disagree on whether a settlement can keep the dollar figure confidential. They do not disagree on stating that no confidentiality clause can bar disclosure of the abuse itself. YSOs should draft settlement agreements accordingly, regardless of what a particular state permits on the amount.