Court Opinion

ID: 9697600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:22:53.846205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:34:02.998603
License: Public Domain

Murphy, C. J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

While I concur with Parts I and III of the Court’s opinion, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s holding in Part II that the so-called automatic removal provisions contained in § 8 of Art. IV of the Constitution of Maryland violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
In McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 81 S. Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961), the Supreme Court said: (366 U. S. at 425-426)
“Although no precise formula has been developed, the Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the States a wide scope of discretion in enacting laws which affect some groups of citizens differently than others. The constitutional safeguard is offended only if the classification rests on ground wholly irrelevant to the achievement of *87the State’s objective. State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional powers despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality. A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it . . . .”
It is fundamental in cases involving constitutional attacks based upon equal protection grounds that constitutionality is presumed in the absence of a clear and convincing showing by the party assailing a legislative classification that it does not rest upon any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary. Matter of Trader, 272 Md. 364, 325 A. 2d 398 (1974) and cases therein cited. In my judgment the majority has strayed significantly from the import of these decisions and has concluded, unnecessarily and unwisely, that even though the appellants adduced no evidence bearing on the matter in the proceedings below, no reasonable basis conceivably exists for distinguishing between the scope of the automatic removal right granted to litigants in civil law cases in the Eighth Judicial Circuit from that authorized in the other seven judicial circuits of the State. That states are empowered to draw reasonable distinctions between subdivisions within its borders is indeed a well settled constitutional precept, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 28 n. 66, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973), and since the difference in treatment involved in this case is not so irrational as to be invidiously discriminatory on its face, I would not emasculate, as the majority does, a state constitutional classification which has stood for one hundred years by sua sponte taking judicial notice of matters of doubtful conclusive import. What the majority has done in this case is to excise all those provisions from § 8 of Art. IV of the Constitution of Maryland which afford litigants in civil law cases an automatic right of removal to another court upon mere suggestion in writing, under oath, that a fair and impartial trial cannot otherwise be obtained; under the Court’s ruling, therefore, removal in civil law cases can hereafter only be *88obtained upon an actual showing of prejudice. As neat as the surgery done by the majority on § 8 may be, and as much as I may applaud the result in terms of sound judicial administration, the opinion of the Court goes too far and accomplishes too much on a record devoid of supporting evidentiary justification. See Matter of Trader, supra.