Court Opinion

ID: 9759788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:28:05.725432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:04.644562
License: Public Domain

Murphy, C. J,

dissenting:

The Court holds that employees of political subdivisions of the state, including the City of Baltimore, are within the coverage of the state law on fair employment practices. As a consequence, the Court concludes that political subdivisions are subject to the statutory authority of the Maryland Commission on Human Relations to investigate and rectify discriminatory employment practices. While I am heartily in favor of the result reached by the Court, it so plainly contravenes the legislative intention that I must respectfully dissent.
*44The majority recognizes that political subdivisions have never been, and are not now, included within the statutory definition of a “person” or “employer” subject to the Act’s coverage as set forth in §§ 18 (a) and (b). It nevertheless reasons that political subdivisions are employers within the ambit of the Commission’s authority because § 18 (e), newly added to the law by the 1973 amendment to Art. 49B, defines the term “employee” to include individuals “subject to ... local civil service laws.” That the General Assembly intended to include employees of political subdivisions within the protection of the state law is manifest, the majority holds, because the title to the 1973 amendments to Art. 49B provides that the Act was “generally [to] conform the State Fair Employment Practices Law to the 1972 amendments of Title VII, Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
The federal law, unlike the state law, specifies that the terms “person” and “employer” include “governments, governmental agencies, [and] political subdivisions,” and that the term “employee” includes individuals “subject to the civil service laws of a . .. political subdivision.” Had the Maryland legislature intended to conform the state law to the federal law in this vital particular, it would have amended the definition of a “person” or “employer” in §§ 18 (a) and (b) to include political subdivisions in conformity with the federal law. That it did not do so indicates quite clearly that the exclusion was deliberate. The terms “person” and “employer” are the controlling terms under the state law, as under the federal law, in determining who is subject to the law’s provisions. That employees whose employers are not covered by the Act are necessarily precluded from its protection could hardly be more apparent.
As indicated, the term “employee” is defined in the federal law to include individuals “subject to the civil service laws of a .. . political subdivision” and thus goes hand-in-glove with the federal definition of an employer as including “governments, governmental agencies, [and] political subdivisions.” The state law, on the other hand, does not include political subdivisions as “employers” and defines an *45“employee” in § 18 (e) to mean an individual “employed by an employer,” with exceptions listed which are not applicable to individuals “subject to . .. local civil service laws.” Although the § 18 (e) definition of an “employee” may be badly mangled, the legislature quite obviously did not intend to include individuals employed by political subdivisions under the Act since political subdivisions are neither a “person” nor “employer” subject to the Act’s provisions; and hence their employees are not “employed by an employer” within the contemplation of § 18 (e).
The majority relies heavily on the title to the 1973 amendments to accomplish what the amendments themselves did not do. While the title of an Act may be considered in doubtful cases in ascertaining the intention of the legislature, it will not be permitted to control the express language of the Act. Engel v. Baltimore, 140 Md. 284, 117 A. 901 (1922); 2A Sutherland, Statutory Construction, § 47.03 (4th ed. 1973). I believe the majority has erred by inferring from the title an intention at odds with the express language of the statute.