Opinion ID: 305193
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Local Statutes

Text: 17 In reply to these contentions, appellees argue that, even if Section 3604(c) can be read as precluding registration of racial covenants, local legislation in the District of Columbia Code prevents the Recorder from instituting the relief requested. The Recorder, they point out, is a ministerial officer who is bound to accept all deeds tendered to him without exercising any independent discretion. 18 This argument is totally without merit. In the first place, even if we assume that the Recorder is acting under statutory compulsion when he records racial covenants, this fact alone does not insulate his conduct from judicial review. The local statute which sets out the powers of the Recorder of Deeds can hardly be supposed to preempt the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Indeed, the 1968 Act explicitly provides that any law of a State, a political subdivision, or other such jurisdiction that purports to require or permit any action that would be a discriminatory housing practice under this subchapter shall to that extent be invalid. 6 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3615 (1970). 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3602(f) (1970), in turn, defines [d]iscriminatory housing practice to mean an act that is unlawful under section 3604    of this title. And, as argued above, recordation of restrictive covenants is made unlawful by 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3604(c). It follows that if a part of the District of Columbia Code really forces the Recorder to violate appellants' Section 3604 rights, then that portion of the Code is pro tanto unlawful. 19 It is unnecessary for us to invalidate any provision of the District of Columbia Code, however, since we fail to perceive the statutory conflict which troubles appellees. On the contrary, as we read the local provisions, the Recorder has no choice but to reject deeds which indicate a racial preference. Thus, while it must be conceded that the Recorder is, for most purposes, a ministerial officer, 45 D.C.Code Sec. 701(a) (1) makes clear that he is required to record only those instruments affecting the title or ownership of real estate. Of course, it is uncontested that after Shelley v. Kraemer, supra, a restrictive covenant can have no effect on title or ownership. Moreover, the Police Regulations of the District of Columbia, Article 45, Section 3(b), make it illegal to include restrictive covenants in deeds, see note 1 supra, and 45 D.C.Code Sec. 503 forbids the Recorder from recording any instrument which shall not be executed and acknowledged agreeably to law. Since restrictive covenants are not executed agreeably to law, the Recorder exceeds his statutory mandate when he accepts them for filing. 20 It is true that the old case of Dancy v. Clark, 24 App.D.C. 487 (1905), states that the recorder of deeds is in the category of ministerial officers, and has no jurisdiction to pass upon the validity of instruments of writing presented to him for record. Id. at 499. But that case was decided years before it was imagined that inclusion of racial covenants in deeds would be made illegal or that state involvement with restrictive covenants was a wrong of constitutional magnitude. It stretches credulity to the breaking point to suppose that the Dancy court was able to foresee the 67 years of statutory and constitutional history which have transpired since its decision. Nor is there anything in Dancy to support the proposition that the Recorder is bound to accept a document when, by so doing, he exceeds his statutory powers and commits an injury of constitutional proportions. See pages 637-640 infra. Indeed, the Dancy court itself recognized that when a document is facially invalid the Recorder is justified in refusing it. 7 Of course, restrictive covenants have been facially invalid since Shelley v. Kraemer, supra, was decided in 1948. 21 Thus, whether the Recorder's duties are viewed as discretionary or ministerial, it should at least be clear that he has not been invested with authority to break the law. We refuse to accept the paradoxical proposition that the very restrictions on the Recorder's powers which, for most purposes, make his action ministerial somehow enlarge his authority and permit him to exceed the statutory limits put on his jurisdiction. We think the statutes restricting the Recorder to the filing of instruments affecting the title or ownership of real estate and executed    agreeably to law mean what they say and they are not to be flouted on the sophistic theory that the limits placed on the Recorder restrict his power to obey those limits.