Opinion ID: 1908480
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Conflict Between Chapter 93A and the Public General Laws of the State

Text: The lower court, in applying the constitutional mandate of Article XI-A, § 3  that in case of any conflict between said local law and any Public General Law now or hereafter enacted the Public General Law shall control  held that several provisions of Chapter 93A were in conflict with State law and were, therefore, null, void and of no effect. Invalidated on these grounds were provisions concerning retaliatory eviction, written leases, two-year lease terms, and judgments by confession. The express language of the Constitution, Article XI-A, § 3, is clear and unambiguous; its proper application, however, has often proved difficult. In City of Baltimore v. Sitnick & Firey, 254 Md. 303, 317, 255 A.2d 376, 382 (1969), Judge Finan, for the Court, comprehensively reviewed our previous decisions on the question of conflict between a local law and a public general law within the meaning of Article XI-A, giving this succinct summary: A distillation of the opinions we have cited leaves the residual thought that a political subdivision may not prohibit what the State by general public law has permitted, but it may prohibit what the State has not expressly permitted. Stated another way, unless a general public law contains an express denial of the right to act by local authority, the State's prohibition of certain activity in a field does not impliedly guarantee that all other activity shall be free from local regulation and in such a situation the same field may thus be opened to supplemental local regulation. In Sitnick, we reasoned that Baltimore City, under the powers granted it under Article XI-A, could supplement the Statewide minimum wage law by a city ordinance establishing minimum wage standards higher than those set by state legislation and could include within the provisions of the ordinance businesses exempted from the state legislation. We noted, 254 Md. at 324-25, 255 A.2d at 386, that: In none of the provisions of the ... City law [found by the lower court to conflict with the State law] does it authorize a minimum wage which is lower than that provided by the State law, nor does it exempt any employees included under the State law; we think this is the crucial norm which must be used to measure the City law regarding any conflict with the statute. The situation before us, unlike Sitnick, (and many of the cases discussed therein) does not involve the direct conflict inherent in a dual regulatory scheme, since in the instant case, Montgomery County has attempted to comprehensively regulate the apartment rental business and landlord-tenant affairs, but the State has not. The theory of permissible supplementation of State law by local ordinance is, therefore, inapposite. Manifestly, whether a conflict exists between Chapter 93A and the public general law concerning real property can only be determined by reviewing the provisions of each in light of the controlling precedents.