107oag140 ( 2022 )


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  • 140                                                     [107 Op. Att’y
    CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
    EQUAL PROTECTION – REJECTING THE CONTINUING VALIDITY
    OF PRIOR OPINIONS THAT UPHELD OR APPLIED RACIALLY
    DISCRIMINATORY LAWS
    November 21, 2022
    The Honorable Bill Ferguson, President of the Senate
    Maryland General Assembly
    The Honorable Adrienne A. Jones, Speaker of the House
    Maryland General Assembly
    Earlier this year, we commenced a review of the validity of
    prior official opinions of the Attorney General that upheld or
    applied racially discriminatory Maryland laws that were later found
    to be unconstitutional. This inquiry was inspired by a recent
    opinion of the former Virginia Attorney General, Mark R. Herring,
    who analyzed whether prior opinions in that state that “relied
    upon—or promoted—racially discriminatory laws” were “still in
    effect.” Va. Op. Att’y Gen. No. 21-103, 
    2022 WL 173637
     (Jan.
    12, 2022), https://www.oag.state.va.us/files/Opinions/2022/21-
    103-Locke-and-Bagby-Issued.pdf. Like the Virginia Attorney
    General, we conclude that some of the prior opinions of the
    Attorney General of Maryland are no longer good law. More
    specifically, in searching for prior opinions of the Attorney General
    that upheld or applied racially discriminatory laws, we found many
    such opinions that either explicitly relied on or implicitly accepted
    two discriminatory legal principles that we now recognize as
    abhorrent to the Constitution: (1) the notion that the State may
    restrict interracial marriage and (2) the doctrine of “separate but
    equal” in public facilities, especially public education. To the
    extent that any prior opinions explicitly or implicitly upheld either
    of these clearly invalid legal principles, we expressly overrule
    them.1
    1
    We note that, in some instances, these opinions may have applied
    other principles, such as the standard rules of statutory interpretation.
    These opinions also sometimes involved analysis that can be separated
    from the analysis that upheld or applied the discriminatory law at issue.
    To be clear, we are focused here on the parts of these prior opinions that
    explicitly or implicitly upheld racially discriminatory laws that we now
    understand to be unconstitutional, or explicitly or implicitly upheld the
    invalid legal principles that served as the basis for those laws. We
    express no view as to any other aspects of those opinions.
    Gen. 140]                                                          141
    I
    Background
    Maryland, like many states, has a long and unfortunate history
    of racially discriminatory laws. In 1664, for example, the colonial
    General Assembly passed a statute providing that all Black persons
    in Maryland would be enslaved for life, codifying a practice that
    had already existed for decades. 1664 Md. Laws, at 533-34; see
    also Ross M. Kimmel, Blacks Before the Law in Colonial
    Maryland, ch. 3 (Jan. 24, 1974) (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Md.),
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5348/html/chap
    3.html (last visited Oct. 26, 2022). Although a free Black population
    eventually developed in the State, free Black Marylanders during the
    time before the Civil War could not vote and could be sold back into
    slavery if they were unemployed. See Maryland State Archives, A
    Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland 10 (2007),
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/intromsa/pdf/slavery_pamphlet.pdf.
    The Constitution of 1864 abolished slavery in Maryland, see
    Md. Decl. Rights Art. 24 (1864), but legally sanctioned racial
    discrimination persisted. For example, as we discuss in more detail
    below, Maryland maintained a segregated system of public
    education until the Supreme Court held such systems
    unconstitutional in 1954, and the State restricted certain interracial
    marriages until just before such laws were also held
    unconstitutional in 1967. State and local governments enacted
    other “Jim Crow” laws as well, such as laws mandating the
    segregation of railroad passenger cars, 1904 Md. Laws, ch. 109;
    1908 Md. Laws, ch. 248, restricting voting rights under a
    “grandfather clause” in certain local elections, 1908 Md. Laws, ch.
    525, and segregating residential neighborhoods, Baltimore City
    Ord. No. 692 (May 15, 1911).2 Only during the era of the Civil
    Rights Movement did the trend of discriminatory laws begin to
    reverse in a significant way, with the enactment of civil rights
    legislation such as a prohibition on discrimination in places of
    public accommodation. 1964 Md. Laws (1st Spec. Sess.), ch. 29.
    Of course, legally sanctioned racial discrimination in
    Maryland was not limited to discrimination against Black people.
    For example, the colony of Maryland did not recognize the
    property rights of the Indigenous peoples who inhabited what is
    now Maryland at the time of English colonization, see Robert J.
    2
    At the State level, however, multiple attempts to add a “grandfather
    clause” to the State Constitution failed. See Garrett Power, Eugenics,
    Jim Crow and Baltimore’s Best, 49 Md. Bar J. 4, 8 (Nov. 2016).
    142                                                      [107 Op. Att’y
    Miller, The Doctrine of Discovery in American Indian Law, 
    42 Idaho L. Rev. 1
    , 23 (2005), and these Indigenous peoples were
    gradually forced out of the colony or onto reservations that were
    later abolished, see Maryland Manual, “Native Americans,”
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/native/html/01
    native.html (last visited Oct. 27, 2022); see also Letter from
    Kathryn M. Rowe, Assistant Attorney General, to Del. Peter A.
    Hammen, at 4 & n.3 (Mar. 31, 2009). In addition, members of
    other racial and ethnic groups were sometimes grouped into the
    disfavored legal category of “colored.” See, e.g., State v. Gurry,
    
    121 Md. 534
    , 552 (1913) (discussing discrimination between
    people who were categorized as “white” and those categorized as
    “colored”); see also Isabel Wilkerson, Caste 122-27 (2020)
    (discussing shifting boundaries of the “white” category throughout
    U.S. history).     Certain groups were also singled out for
    discrimination, such as members of the “Malay race,” who were
    prohibited from marrying white or Black people in Maryland in
    1935. See 1935 Md. Laws, ch. 60.
    In more recent years, the State and our Office have attempted
    not only to eliminate discrimination going forward but also to
    confront the discrimination of the past. For example, in 2007 the
    General Assembly formally expressed “profound regret for the role
    that Maryland played in instituting and maintaining slavery and for
    the discrimination that was slavery’s legacy.” 2007 Md. Laws,
    Joint Res. 1. Indeed, our Office has supported the work of
    addressing the State’s history of discrimination by, for example,
    helping to staff the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation
    Commission. 2019 Md. Laws, ch. 41, § 1(d)(2). But we also have
    a responsibility to acknowledge our Office’s own past actions that
    might have perpetuated racial discrimination in the State. To that
    end, we have reviewed the official opinions of the Office of the
    Attorney General, dating back to the first published volume in
    1916, to search for any opinions that might have applied,
    interpreted, or upheld racially discriminatory laws.3
    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. Both
    before and during the Civil Rights Movement, prior Attorneys
    General were asked questions about the interpretation and the
    3
    Although the Attorney General undoubtedly issued written opinions
    prior to 1916, the first published volume of opinions was issued that year,
    which is the same year that the Department of Law (the predecessor of
    our Office) was first created. We thus began our review with 1916.
    Gen. 140]                                                           143
    enforceability of racially discriminatory laws. In particular, our
    predecessors were asked on several occasions about Maryland’s
    laws prohibiting interracial marriage and its laws imposing racial
    segregation in the State’s public schools. As we shall see, in some
    cases, the opinions explicitly advised that racially discriminatory
    laws should continue to be enforced and, in other cases, interpreted
    or applied racially discriminatory laws or legal principles without
    acknowledging or grappling with the constitutional problems they
    raised.
    II
    Analysis
    Our Office’s published opinions serve as the official
    pronouncements of the Attorney General on questions of law. See
    Md. Const., Art. V, § 3(a)(4). Although these official opinions are
    not binding on the courts, they “serve as important guides to those
    charged with the administration of the law.” Mitchell v. Register
    of Wills, 
    227 Md. 305
    , 310 (1962). Thus, we ordinarily “stand[] by
    [our] precedent, much as a court would,” and we “will not overrule
    a prior opinion simply because we might have resolved a close
    question the other way.” 72 Opinions of the Attorney General 200,
    202 (1987). “At the same time, we will not perpetuate a significant
    mistake in legal reasoning” and are always “prepared to recognize
    that a prior opinion has been eroded by changed circumstances.” 
    Id.
    With those principles in mind, we consider the continuing
    validity of prior opinions of the Attorney General that involved
    racially discriminatory laws. Based on our research, these opinions
    fell into two general categories: those involving laws that restricted
    interracial marriage and those involving school-segregation laws.
    We discuss each category of opinions in turn.4
    A.       Laws Restricting Interracial Marriage
    In 1664, Maryland enacted its first law restricting interracial
    marriages. That law was specifically designed to prevent marriage
    between white English women and enslaved Black men. Kimmel,
    supra, ch. 3. Over the ensuing centuries, Maryland continued to
    pass similar laws. See, e.g., 1884 Md. Laws, ch. 264 (prohibiting
    “marriages between white persons and persons of negro descent to
    4
    In some cases, even when the result and the legal reasoning of an
    opinion may not have been discriminatory, the opinions used outdated
    or racist terminology. See, e.g., 54 Opinions of the Attorney General 207
    (1969). We disavow the use of such language.
    144                                                  [107 Op. Att’y
    the third generation”); 1935 Md. Laws, ch. 60 (prohibiting a white
    or Black person from marrying a person of the “Malay race”). In
    fact, the State had such a law on the books until just days before
    the Supreme Court held, in Loving v. Virginia, 
    388 U.S. 1
     (1967),
    that such laws violated the United States Constitution. See 1967
    Md. Laws, ch. 6, § 3 (repealing the law restricting interracial
    marriages, effective June 1, 1967); Loving, 
    388 U.S. at 1
     (noting
    that the opinion was issued on June 12, 1967). That law provided,
    in relevant part:
    All marriages between a white person and a
    negro, or between a white person and a person
    of negro descent, to the third generation,
    inclusive, or between a white person and a
    member of the Malay race or between a negro
    and a member of the Malay race, or between
    a person of negro descent, to the third
    generation, inclusive, and a member of the
    Malay race, are forever prohibited, and shall
    be void.
    Md. Code, Art. 27, § 398 (1967). Before the Supreme Court’s
    decision in Loving, the Office of the Attorney General was asked
    about these laws on several occasions.
    For the most part, the Office interpreted these laws without
    expressly considering their constitutionality. For example, in a
    1928 opinion, the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas asked if it
    was proper to issue a marriage license to a white man and a woman
    whose paternal grandparents were Black. 13 Opinions of the
    Attorney General 164, 164 (1928). The Attorney General at the
    time responded that Maryland law prohibited a Black person from
    marrying a white person and advised the clerk to refuse to issue the
    license, but the opinion did not consider whether the statute was
    constitutional. Id. Similarly, in 1940, the then-Attorney General
    opined that State law prohibited a white woman from marrying a
    Filipino man, again without considering whether the prohibition
    was constitutional.5 25 Opinions of the Attorney General 127, 127-
    28 (1940); see also 18 Opinions of the Attorney General 346, 347
    5
    In the same opinion, the Office concluded that there was no
    prohibition on marriages between a Japanese person and a white person
    or between a Chinese person and a white person. But that was because
    there was no statutory prohibition on such marriages, not because our
    predecessors thought that such a prohibition would raise any
    constitutional issues. 25 Opinions of the Attorney General at 128.
    Gen. 140]                                                             145
    (1933) (mentioning without further comment, in an opinion about
    a different topic related to marriage and divorce, that Maryland law
    prohibited marriages between a white person and a Black person or
    a person with Black ancestry).
    In other instances, however, the Office acknowledged the
    constitutional questions raised by these discriminatory laws but
    nonetheless proceeded to treat them as enforceable or advise that
    they should continue to be enforced. For example, in 1961, the
    clerk for the Circuit Court for Harford County asked if his office
    should continue to refuse marriage licenses to interracial couples
    when their marriage would be prohibited under Maryland law, and
    the then-Attorney General advised that the clerk should indeed
    continue to enforce the State’s law prohibiting certain interracial
    marriages. 46 Opinions of the Attorney General 44, 44-48 (1961).
    The Attorney General concluded that he could only advise that
    existing laws enacted by the General Assembly were unconstitutional
    “where there has been the clearest indication that a decision of the
    courts of our State or of the United States is applicable to and
    invalidates those laws.” Id. at 46. In his view, because the
    Maryland and federal courts had yet to clearly declare these types
    of laws to be unconstitutional, the clerk was required to continue to
    enforce Maryland’s law. Id. at 46-48.6 The Attorney General then
    gave the same answer a few years later, in response to a question
    from a member of the House of Delegates about the statute’s
    constitutionality, despite acknowledging that “[i]n view of the
    recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, of the
    federal courts, and the courts of this State, it might very well be
    found that this statute is in violation of the federal constitution.” 51
    Opinions of the Attorney General 150, 153 (1966).7
    6
    The question of when the Office of the Attorney General should
    advise that an existing State law is unconstitutional in the absence of
    binding precedent directly on point is an admittedly difficult one that
    raises challenging questions about the separation of powers and the role
    of the Attorney General under our State’s system. Indeed, this is a
    question that we have continued to grapple with over the years in other
    contexts. See, e.g., 106 Opinions of the Attorney General 82, 91-92
    (2021); 93 Opinions of the Attorney General 154, 160-61 (2008). The
    point of our opinion here today is not to decide the exact contours of that
    question but rather simply to disavow and to overrule the Office’s prior
    opinions to the extent that they upheld racially discriminatory laws that
    are now clearly unconstitutional.
    7
    The Attorney General also noted that there was no law prohibiting
    couples of different races, who had been married in another jurisdiction,
    from living together in Maryland. 51 Opinions of the Attorney General
    146                                                     [107 Op. Att’y
    Similarly, when the Office was asked shortly thereafter
    whether someone with one parent who was white and one parent
    who was of the “Malay” race was prohibited from marrying a white
    person, the Attorney General acknowledged that laws banning
    interracial marriages had been found unconstitutional in at least
    some other states and that the United States Supreme Court was
    currently considering the question in Loving v. Virginia. 52
    Opinions of the Attorney General 35, 35-36 (1967). But the then-
    Attorney General nevertheless proceeded to consider the question
    of statutory interpretation that had been asked, noting that “[u]ntil
    such a Supreme Court decision clearly and unqualifiedly applicable
    to the Maryland statute or a final judgment of a Maryland court of
    appellate jurisdiction holds our law invalid, we must proceed
    without questioning the overall constitutional propriety” of the
    statute. Id. at 36.
    Ultimately, the opinion concluded that a marriage between a
    white person and a person with one white parent and one “Malay”
    parent was permissible, but not on the ground that there was
    anything constitutionally problematic about the law. Id. at 38.
    Rather, the Attorney General concluded as a matter of statutory
    interpretation that the statute’s prohibition applied only to persons
    who were of the “Malay” race, not persons of Malay descent. Id.
    Obviously, these opinions are inconsistent with the Supreme
    Court’s holding in Loving v. Virginia and with our current
    understanding of the Constitution. As the Supreme Court declared
    in its seminal decision in Loving, “[t]o deny th[e] fundamental
    freedom [to marry] on so unsupportable a basis as the racial
    classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so
    directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the
    Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens
    of liberty without due process of law.” 
    388 U.S. at 12
    .
    Even though some of these prior opinions were framed as
    resolving questions of statutory interpretation and so did not
    expressly consider the constitutionality of the underlying laws, they
    nonetheless applied and interpreted the laws as if they were
    constitutional. Thus, these opinions upholding or applying these
    statutes are no longer good law and are overruled to the extent that
    at 153. But the opinion stopped short of saying that such out-of-state
    marriages would be recognized as valid in Maryland. Cf. 95 Opinions of
    the Attorney General 3, 6 (2010) (concluding, prior to Maryland’s
    legalization of same-sex marriage, that Maryland law would likely
    recognize such marriages if “contracted validly in another jurisdiction”).
    Gen. 140]                                                               147
    they upheld—either explicitly or implicitly—the discriminatory
    legal principle that the State was permitted to prohibit interracial
    marriages.8
    B.       School Segregation
    Although Maryland had made sporadic attempts to establish
    a free public school system since the early nineteenth century, the
    State’s 1864 Constitution made the first provision for a Statewide
    system of public schools. Md. Const., Art. VIII, § 4 (1864); see
    also Maryland Manual, “State Department of Education: Origin,”
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/13sdoe/html/sdoef.html
    (last visited Oct. 27, 2022). That system was segregated from the
    start. The General Assembly’s 1865 implementing legislation
    required each school district to have “one or more schools
    . . . which shall be free to all white youth,” 1865 Md. Laws,
    ch. 160, at 282, and separately provided for “schools for colored
    children” to be funded, if at all, exclusively by donations and by
    taxes paid by Black Marylanders, id. at 296-97. This was the
    beginning of “a formal system of segregated schooling that
    continued for ninety years.” “State Department of Education:
    Origin,” supra; see also 99 Opinions of the Attorney General 88, 91
    (2014) (noting that Maryland retained de jure segregation in public
    education at the time of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision).
    The State also maintained a segregated system of higher
    education, again relying on the principle of “separate but equal”
    even where the separate facilities for Black students were
    demonstrably unequal. See, e.g., Recommendations of the
    Maryland Commission on Higher Education, at 24-25 (1947).
    Indeed, prior to 1920, Maryland offered no public higher education
    opportunities to Black students at all. See Coalition for Equity &
    Excellence in Md. Higher Educ. v. Maryland Higher Educ.
    Comm’n, 
    977 F. Supp. 2d 507
    , 513 (D. Md. 2013). Over the
    following decades the State gradually developed what are now its
    historically Black colleges and universities (sometimes by
    acquiring formerly private institutions, as in the case of Morgan
    8
    To be clear, we do not necessarily mean to cast doubt on the
    principles of statutory interpretation that these opinions employed
    (though, in at least some cases, the Office’s statutory interpretation too
    may have been tainted by discriminatory reasoning). As noted above,
    supra note 1, it is not within the scope of our opinion here today to
    consider whether the Office properly interpreted the laws then in effect
    as written. The point is instead that the opinions are no longer good law
    to the extent that they explicitly or implicitly upheld the constitutionality
    of prohibiting interracial marriage.
    148                                                     [107 Op. Att’y
    State University). See id. at 513-15. The Maryland courts also
    ordered the integration of the University of Maryland School of
    Law in 1936, because the State had no law school at all for Black
    students. See University of Md. v. Murray, 
    169 Md. 478
    , 487-88
    (1936). But the system as a whole remained segregated.
    In 1954, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the
    segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional. Brown v.
    Board of Educ., 
    347 U.S. 483
     (1954). The Court held that “the
    doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” in “the field of public
    education” and declared that “[s]eparate educational facilities are
    inherently unequal.” 
    Id. at 495
    . The Attorney General subsequently
    advised the State Superintendent of Schools, first informally and
    then in an official opinion, that Brown was “crystal clear” and that,
    under its holding, “all constitutional and legislative acts of
    Maryland requiring segregation in the public schools in the State
    of Maryland are unconstitutional, and hence must be treated as
    nullities.” 40 Opinions of the Attorney General 175, 175-77
    (1955). However, as we will discuss, the Office was more resistant
    to the idea of extending Brown to require desegregation in other
    areas.
    Although the cases consolidated in Brown arose from
    elementary and secondary schools, it was quickly recognized that
    Brown required desegregation in higher education as well. Mary
    Ann Connell, Race and Higher Education: The Tortuous Journey
    Toward Desegregation, 36 J. Coll. & Univ. L. 945, 951-52 (2010).
    After Brown, then, the Supreme Court and lower courts had little
    difficulty confirming that public colleges, universities, and
    graduate schools must desegregate. See, e.g., Florida ex rel.
    Hawkins v. Board of Control, 
    350 U.S. 413
    , 414 (1956) (per
    curiam) (involving the University of Florida College of Law);
    Meredith v. Fair, 
    305 F.2d 343
    , 344, 361 (5th Cir. 1962) (involving
    the University of Mississippi).
    As far as we have been able to tell, the Office of the Maryland
    Attorney General did not issue any opinions expressly considering
    the constitutionality of school-segregation laws prior to the
    Supreme Court’s decisions overturning such laws.9 Instead, the
    9
    The Office of the Attorney General did recognize, before Brown,
    that when a Black student was admitted to a normally all-white
    institution, the Black student had to be given access to the institution’s
    facilities, such as dormitories, on the same terms as white students. 36
    Opinions of the Attorney General 334, 334-35 (1951). But the opinion
    Gen. 140]                                                            149
    Office received questions about how to interpret various laws that
    supported the State’s regime of segregated schools, and our
    predecessors generally interpreted or otherwise cited those laws
    without raising any questions about their constitutionality.10 For
    example, in 1937, the Office considered whether the University of
    Maryland could remove two Black students who had been admitted
    to its law school on the basis of a new statute that afforded
    scholarship funds for Black students to attend out-of-state higher
    education institutions when they were otherwise qualified for
    admission to Maryland programs (like law school) that were not
    offered at the State’s colleges for Black students. 22 Opinions of
    the Attorney General 827, 827-28 (1937). Although the Office
    concluded that the law did not apply retroactively to allow the
    removal of those two students, id. at 828, the opinion did not
    question the legality of the new legislative scheme, even though a
    clear purpose of that scheme was to try to provide a legal argument
    justifying the re-segregation of the University of Maryland’s law
    school on the grounds that Black students had now been given
    scholarships to attend a supposedly “separate but equal” law school
    outside the State.11
    did not question or consider the constitutionality of a separate-but-equal
    regime more generally.
    10
    See 6 Opinions of the Attorney General 146, 146-48 (1921)
    (interpreting the statutory funding requirements for a “central colored
    industrial school” in Charles County without questioning the creation of
    a separate school for Black students); 19 Opinions of the Attorney
    General 527, 527-28 (1934) (analyzing whether a scholarship program
    for Black students was limited to use at “Princess Anne Academy”—
    which was a State higher education institution solely for Black
    students—without questioning the legality of having a segregated
    college); 21 Opinions of the Attorney General 807, 807-08 (1936)
    (deciding which entity had the legal duty to fund a “training school” for
    “colored girls” without considering the legality of segregation of such
    schools); see also 5 Opinions of the Attorney General 136, 137-38
    (1920); 5 Opinions of the Attorney General 139, 140 (1920); 6 Opinions
    of the Attorney General 556, 556-57 (1921); 8 Opinions of the Attorney
    General 113, 114 (1923); 10 Opinions of the Attorney General 105, 105
    (1925); 12 Opinions of the Attorney General 85, 86 (1927); 19 Opinions
    of the Attorney General 343, 344-45 (1934); 24 Opinions of the Attorney
    General 577, 577-78 (1939); 27 Opinions of the Attorney General 79, 79
    (1942).
    11
    The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court found that such a
    scholarship scheme in a different state did not satisfy that state’s
    constitutional obligations even under the pre-Brown standard of
    “separate but equal.” Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 
    305 U.S. 337
    ,
    348-50 (1938).
    150                                                       [107 Op. Att’y
    In fact, in one instance, our predecessors even suggested
    continuing approval of the doctrine of “separate but equal,” though
    that was not the focus of that opinion. More specifically, when
    considering the same scholarship program that was at issue in the
    1937 opinion, the then-Attorney General acknowledged that “the
    State [was] constitutionally required to extend to its citizens, white
    and colored alike, substantially equal treatment in the facilities it
    provides from the public funds” but went on to say that “[t]his
    equality does not require that the privilege be provided members of
    the two races in the same place.” 27 Opinions of the Attorney
    General 278, 278 (1942).
    Although these pre-Brown opinions generally did not
    consider the constitutionality of school-segregation regimes, they
    also did not question the legality of such regimes. We thus overturn
    these prior opinions to the extent that, by interpreting and applying
    Maryland’s racially discriminatory laws, they implicitly upheld the
    principle that segregation of public schools was constitutionally
    permissible.12
    After the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown, the Office of
    the Attorney General was asked on multiple occasions to address
    the constitutionality of some of the State’s remaining school-
    segregation laws. The Office’s opinions responding to those
    questions, however, were not always consistent with the spirit of
    the Brown decision (or with our current understanding of the
    Constitution).
    In a 1956 opinion, for instance, the then-Attorney General
    considered whether Brown and related cases also invalidated the
    Maryland statutes that created segregated “training schools.” 41
    Opinions of the Attorney General 120, 120 (1956). The training
    schools in question had been created as “places to separate erring
    minors from the corrupting influence of improper circumstances”
    and, given that the minors resided there by order of the Maryland
    courts, the training schools functioned in part as schools and in part
    as correctional institutions. Id. at 127. The Attorney General
    concluded that the “training schools” were different enough from
    the public schools that had been at issue in Brown to leave some
    question about whether the Maryland laws providing for
    12
    Again, we express no view on whether the prior opinions correctly
    interpreted the statutes in question as they existed at the time and no view
    about the other aspects of the opinions that did not involve the implicit
    or explicit approval of the legal principles underlying the State’s
    segregation regime.
    Gen. 140]                                                           151
    segregated training schools had been invalidated by Supreme
    Court’s decision. Id. More specifically, in the then-Attorney
    General’s view, the fact that the training schools served in part as
    correctional institutions meant the Supreme Court’s rationale in
    Brown, which he claimed was based only on concerns about
    educational equality, did not necessarily apply. Id. at 128-29.13
    Even when given an opportunity three years later to change his
    mind, the then-Attorney General reiterated his view, finding again
    that the segregation of the State’s training schools had not yet been
    rendered clearly unconstitutional by Supreme Court precedent. 44
    Opinions of the Attorney General 123, 125 (1959).
    Eventually, Maryland’s highest court decided the question
    and held, unsurprisingly, that the segregation of Maryland’s
    training schools clearly violated the Constitution under Brown.
    State Bd. of Pub. Welfare v. Myers, 
    224 Md. 246
    , 253-55 (1961).
    The Court explained that the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown had
    “flatly stated that in the field of public education the doctrine of
    ‘separate but equal’ has no place” and had “repudiated” the “basic
    rationale” of the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy v.
    Ferguson. 
    Id. at 253
    . Thus, the Maryland courts found, “[t]here
    can be no doubt the principle extends to public education at all
    levels,” including the “educational programs offered in the training
    schools.” 
    Id. at 253-54
    . Following the decision in Myers, the
    Attorney General issued an opinion which acknowledged that the
    segregation of training schools was unconstitutional. 46 Opinions
    of the Attorney General 51, 51 (1961). Although the two prior
    opinions upholding segregation in training schools were effectively
    overturned by that 1961 opinion, we now formally overturn them
    as well.
    III
    Conclusion
    The U.S. Supreme Court and the Maryland courts have made
    clear that laws prohibiting interracial marriage and providing for
    the racial segregation of public schools are illegal and contrary to
    13
    In drawing that comparison, the then-Attorney General relied on
    the disturbing argument that desegregation of the training schools “could
    have the effect of enforcing social as well as educational association
    among the inmates for twenty-four hours a day.” 41 Opinions of the
    Attorney General at 129 (emphasis in original). The undeniably racist
    notion appeared to be that requiring white children to live with Black
    children (and vice versa) could somehow lead to societal harms that
    requiring them to go to school together would not.
    152                                                [107 Op. Att’y
    the values of our federal and State constitutions. Thus, the prior
    opinions of the Attorney General involving such laws are no longer
    good law to the extent that they explicitly or implicitly upheld
    either these discriminatory laws or the discriminatory legal
    principles used to justify such laws. Although, as a practical
    matter, those aspects of the opinions were long ago rendered
    unenforceable by changes in the law, we recognize that the
    opinions continue to serve as a reminder of the history of racial
    injustice perpetuated through the legal institutions of our State
    government. We thus formally overrule the portions of those
    opinions that upheld or relied on the erroneous view that the State
    could prohibit interracial marriages and impose the segregation of
    public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
    Renouncing these unfortunate opinions cannot change the past, but
    we hope that it will serve to reinforce our Office’s current
    commitment to equality under the law.
    Brian E. Frosh
    Attorney General of Maryland
    Thomas S. Chapman
    Assistant Attorney General
    Patrick B. Hughes
    Chief Counsel,
    Opinions and Advice
    * Whitney Grimm and Sharon Kimemia, former interns for the
    Office of the Attorney General, contributed significantly to the
    preparation of this opinion.