Maryland Classified Employees Ass'n, Inc. v. State

Decision Date01 September 1996
Docket NumberNo. 79,79
Citation694 A.2d 937,346 Md. 1
PartiesMARYLAND CLASSIFIED EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION, INC. et al. v. STATE of Maryland et al. ,
CourtMaryland Court of Appeals

John F. Conwell (J. Edward Davis, on brief), Towson, for Appellant.

Catherine M. Shultz (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General; Joseph B. Spillman, Baltimore; Kathyrn M. Rowe, Assistant Attorney General, Annapolis), all on brief, for Appellees.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, CHASANOW, KARWACKI, RAKER and WILNER, JJ.

WILNER, Judge.

The Maryland Classified Employees Association, Inc. (MCEA), Chapter 232 of that Association, and seven of the Association's individual members, appellants here, filed an action in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City against the State of Maryland, the State Department of Human Resources, and three agencies within that Department, seeking a declaratory judgment that Chapter 491 of the 1995 Maryland Laws was unconstitutional.

Appellants' attack was on the provisions of Chapter 491 that created a four-year pilot program for the "privatization" of certain child support enforcement services in Baltimore City and Queen Anne's County then being provided by the Department of Human Resources. Appellants contended (1) that the inclusion of those provisions into what was otherwise a "welfare reform" measure caused the bill to run afoul of the requirement in Article III, Section 29 of the Maryland Constitution that a law embrace but one subject, and (2) that, substantively, those provisions violated appellants' Federal and State rights to due process of law.

In a Memorandum Opinion and Order, the court rejected appellants' contentions and entered a declaratory judgment that the law did not violate Article III, Section 29 and did not deprive appellants of due process of law, under either the United States or Maryland Constitutions. We granted certiorari to consider appellants' appeal before any proceedings in the Court of Special Appeals and shall affirm the judgment of the circuit court.

I. INTRODUCTION

One of the dominant issues of public policy facing both Congress and State legislatures in the past few years has been the fashioning of an appropriate response to popular demands for "welfare reform"--calls for limiting entitlements to Government assistance, particularly under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, and requiring competent recipients of such assistance to look to the job market, rather than to the Government, for sustenance. Caught up in that debate have also been a variety of measures to increase the effectiveness of public and private child support collection efforts, to assure that non-custodial parents are identified and made to provide regular and appropriate support for their children.

Those issues have been at the forefront of political debate in Maryland as well. They dominated the 1994, 1995, and 1996 sessions of the General Assembly. In the 1994 session, Governor Schaefer sponsored House Bill 482, authorizing a comprehensive pilot program of AFDC reform in three subdivisions of the State, but then vetoed the bill because of certain amendments added by the Legislature. See 1994 Maryland Laws at 3865. In the 1995 session, 19 bills were introduced dealing, in one way or another, with public assistance programs, including four that were similar in nature to the vetoed House Bill 482, and 31 bills were introduced dealing with child or spousal support. We are most concerned here with two of those bills--Senate Bill 754, which was enacted as Chapter 491, and House Bill 1177, which was defeated by the Senate as a separate bill, but the provisions of which were then amended into Senate Bill 754.

The sequel to the 1995 legislative activity came in 1996, when the General Assembly abolished the "welfare reform" pilot program enacted by Chapter 491 in favor of a different approach but left intact, for the remaining three years of its life, the separate pilot project of "privatizing" State child support collection efforts in Baltimore City and Queen Anne's County, initially proposed in House Bill 1177 and then merged into Senate Bill 754. See 1996 Maryland Laws, ch. 351.

The thrust of appellants' "single subject" attack on Chapter 491 arises from the engrafting of House Bill 1177, following its defeat in the Senate, on to Senate Bill 754. They see the two bills as involving very different subjects, thereby causing the consolidated bill to embrace more than one subject. Particularly egregious, in their view, was the manner in which the consolidation was accomplished.

II. RELEVANT LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

Senate Bill 754 was introduced on February 13, 1995. Designed to establish a pilot program of "welfare reform" in three subdivisions--Baltimore City and Anne Arundel and Prince George's Counties--it followed closely the basic format of House Bill 482 from the 1994 session and was but one of several similar bills introduced into the 1995 session. See also Senate Bills 212 and 300 and House Bill 1 (1995).

The basis and thrust of Senate Bill 754 were described in a preamble to the bill, which declared, among other things, that

(1) for too many families, welfare had become a permanent way of life and that a system of continuous income maintenance not only destroys an individual's incentive to become self-sufficient but also leads to intergenerational dependency;

(2) the current welfare system did not reward work or efforts to seek and obtain a job but instead created an incentive to stay on welfare, that it created numerous disincentives for the maintenance of two-parent families, and that it largely ignored the role and responsibilities of the father; and

(3) one of the priorities of the State was to achieve a significant reduction in the number of citizens enrolled in the AFDC program and to transform a system that fosters dependence, low self-esteem, and irresponsible behavior into one that rewards work and fosters self-reliance, responsibility, and family stability.

To help achieve those goals, the bill required the Secretary of Human Resources to establish a pilot program in Baltimore City and in Anne Arundel and Prince George's Counties, under which the Department of Human Resources and recipients of AFDC who were not specifically exempted from the program would be required to sign an agreement imposing certain mutual obligations. The details of the program were couched as eligibility requirements for AFDC assistance. In its initial form, the bill required AFDC recipients (1) to cooperate with their local child support enforcement office if the paternity of any of their children had not been established, (2) to participate in job search and life skills activities for one week, (3) to continue supervised job search activities for the ensuing 11 weeks, and (4) if that job search proved unsuccessful, to receive additional case management services, including a job skills assessment, job counseling, and job training. Recipients with children under three years of age would have been required to devote up to 20 hours a week to the training and work requirements; those with children over three years of age would have been required to devote up to 40 hours a week, both subject to the availability of adequate child care, which the recipient was obliged to take all reasonable steps to arrange.

Beyond the training and search provisions was an actual work requirement. The bill, as introduced, would have terminated AFDC payments after 18 months unless (1) the recipient could show good cause, in accordance with criteria set forth in the bill, for an extension, or (2) she or he fulfilled certain work requirements. The work requirement could be satisfied by working full time in either a subsidized or unsubsidized job, by doing community service interspersed with job search activities for a formulated number of hours a week, or by working at an unsubsidized job and performing community service for an aggregate of 30 hours a week. Non-compliance with these requirements would result first in temporary and then in permanent terminations of AFDC benefits.

Those features of the bill were limited to AFDC recipients in the pilot program which, as the bill initially read, was expected to include only 2,000 families--1,000 in Baltimore City and 500 each in Anne Arundel and Prince George's Counties. See February, 1995 Fiscal Note to Senate Bill 754 prepared by Department of Fiscal Services. Other features of the bill were Statewide in application and were not limited to the pilot program. Among those features were (1) the requirement that AFDC recipients who were themselves minors, as a condition of eligibility, live with a parent, guardian, or other adult relative, or in an adult-supervised group living arrangement, and (2) a provision that made the parents of minor parents jointly and severally liable for the support of their grandchildren.

Senate Bill 754 was substantially amended in both the Senate Finance Committee and on the floor of the Senate. Most of the amendments dealt with the scope and conditions of the pilot program in the three subdivisions. One of the more significant amendments not keyed to the pilot program was added on the floor of the Senate on March 27, 1995. It required the Department of Human Resources to notify the Motor Vehicle Administration of persons who were obligated to pay child support to AFDC recipients and who were more than 60 days in arrears in their child support, and the Motor Vehicle Administration then, after notice and an opportunity for hearing, to suspend the driver's license of such persons. The amendment tracked the language of House Bill 248, which had passed the House of Delegates nine days earlier and was then sitting in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. With its language added to Senate Bill 754, House Bill 248 died in the Senate committee. As amended, Senate Bill 754 passed the Senate on March 29 and...

To continue reading

Request your trial
15 cases
  • Kim v. Bd. of Liquor License Commissioners for Balt. City
    • United States
    • Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
    • 29 Junio 2022
    ...the problems underlying those issues often must be multifaceted." Id. at 369, 809 A.2d 640 (quoting Md. Classified Emps. Ass'n, Inc. v. State , 346 Md. 1, 14, 694 A.2d 937 (1997) ).In order to determine whether HB 135 violated the one subject clause, the Court of Appeals looked to the then ......
  • Towson Univ. v. Conte
    • United States
    • Maryland Court of Appeals
    • 17 Noviembre 2004
    ...33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972); Codd v. Velger, 429 U.S. 624, 97 S.Ct. 882, 51 L.Ed.2d 92 (1977); Maryland Classified Employees Association v. State of Maryland, 346 Md. 1, 22, 694 A.2d 937, 947 (1997); De Bleecker v. Montgomery County, 292 Md. 498, 513 n. 4, 438 A.2d 1348, 1356 n. 4 (1982). Such a ......
  • Samuels v. Tschechtelin
    • United States
    • Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
    • 13 Octubre 2000
    ...appellant's purported property interest is not entitled to substantive due process protection. Cf. Maryland Classified Employees Ass'n v. State, 346 Md. 1, 21-22, 694 A.2d 937 (1997) (discussing, generally, substantive due process claim arising out of termination of public We next consider ......
  • Harvey v. Marshall
    • United States
    • Maryland Court of Appeals
    • 14 Octubre 2005
    ...individuals who fall behind in their child support obligations. 1995 Md. Laws, Chap. 491; see also Maryland Classified Employees Ass'n v. State, 346 Md. 1, 5-7, 694 A.2d 937, 938-40 (1997) (describing the features and welfare reform provisions of S.B. 754). These new incentives and enforcem......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT