Don't forget this story from last year

Md. Attorney General Frosh Overrules 22 Racist Opinions of Predecessors

The 22 rulings, previously rendered unconstitutional by courts, had enabled state agencies to uphold segregation, discriminate against people of color, and deny marriage licenses based on race. While Frosh’s office noted the opinions are not legal, formally overruling them "helps Maryland atone for generations of racist policies." Read his new opinion here.

“The laws were abhorrent and ultimately held to be unconstitutional,” Frosh (D) commented. “We hope that our opinion today will help remove the stain of those earlier, harmful and erroneous works. We will continue to fight to stamp out racism and hate in all of our work for Maryland.” 

He started the effort to review these old legal opinions after Virginia’s outgoing attorney general, Democrat Mark Herring, in 2022 overturned 58 legal opinions upholding racial discrimination issued by past attorney generals. Maryland's Office looked at opinions as old as 1916, the first year they were compiled in published volume. “As much as we might prefer otherwise, our research showed that the Office of the Maryland Attorney General was sometimes complicit in the State’s history of racial discrimination,” Frosh wrote.

Some examples of the overruled opinions are: (1) After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled schools could not be segregated by race under the “separate but equal” doctrine, one argued that Maryland could separate Black and White children in trouble with the law and assigned by courts to remedial boarding schools known as “training schools;” and (2) In 1928, Maryland’s attorney general opined a clerk should deny a marriage license to a White man and a woman whose paternal grandparents were Black.

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Source: Read the Attorney General's legal brief.

Read the November 2022 Washington Post article.

Maryland

New Maryland Attorney General to Emphasize Civil Rights Violation Enforcement

Maryland Attorney General-elect Anthony G. Brown wants more authority than his predecessors to go after civil rights violators and to investigate police departments for patterns of misconduct. Former Congressman Brown said he will ask the General Assembly to pass legislation that enables him to sue companies and individuals who violate federal or state civil rights laws, for example, in housing or employment. The only states that have this are the District, New York, and California.

He has been reimagining the 850-member office under his leadership, looking at what other attorneys general are doing, and considering what actions he will take. Maryland's new Governor, Comptroller, and Brown have said they will attack systemic problems to make the state fairer and more just.

Brown said the system in Maryland that allows a person to file a discrimination complaint with the Maryland Civil Rights Commission or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is not sufficient to root out violators. “The Civil Rights Commission has been doing great work for 53 years, but what they don’t do is they don’t do class action. They don’t do multi-jurisdictional,” he said. He said while the commission may have the authority to bring “big-impact litigation,” it typically does not. Brown thinks that a company with a pattern of discriminating against employees or a landlord with multiple complexes in other states outside Maryland who engages in bias should be held accountable. “We’re going to the General Assembly this session both for the authority and the resources it’s going to take [for] attorneys and investigators to be able to stand up that type of unit,” he said.

As Brown assumes office, Maryland has become the most diverse state on the East Coast according to census figures. He said it is crucial to correct the generational and pervasive inequities that have disproportionately affected people of color, including in housing, employment, policing and contracting. Brown recently told a town hall of advocates who were urging him to weigh in on housing, policing and other issues that his “North Star will be equity.” During a recent interview, Brown said “The principles, the values of fairness and justice will be the lens through which we will see the world."

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Source: Read the January 2, 2023 Washington Post article.