ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who says a mixed-martial arts training gym discriminated against her for complaining about a comment one of the instructors made about left-handed people has no further avenue for appeal after a district court rejected her claim, Maryland's highest court ruled.
In a decision that drew a dissent from the court’s chief justice, the state Court of Appeals said the statute creating the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights doesn’t provide for anything more than circuit court review when the commission declines to pursue a discrimination claim.
“The plain language of the statute indicates that the General Assembly intended to confine judicial review of no-probable-cause determinations to the circuit court,” the Supreme Court ruled in a March 29 decision.
Chief Justice Matthew Fader dissented, joined by two other justices, saying the interplay of several statutes including the state Administrative Procedure Act suggested unhappy claimants could appeal an adverse judgment to a higher court.
Jennifer Rowe filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Commission in 2019 against her gym, Krav Maga MD, after it posted a comment on its private Facebook page asking why some people have negative attitudes despite having full use of their extremities. Rowe responded “because some of us have mental/emotional disabilities.”
The gym removed her comment because it violated its policies and Rowe communicated with the staff several times over the removal. Then in June 2019 she emailed complaints to several KMMD staff about a comment one of the instructors made about left-handed people. After several more exchanges, including phone calls to the gym, she emailed KMMD’s chief executive, Jeff Mount, to state if the gym “cannot help, then I will have no choice but to initiate an inquiry with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.”
Mount then emailed back, terminating her membership for engaging in “disruptive, slanderous and harassing” behavior. Rowe responded by filing a complaint with the civil rights commission. But the commission rejected her claim after an investigation.
Title 20 of the Maryland Code’s State Government Article says complainants can appeal such a rejection to district court. The district court also rejected it, so she appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeal. But after hearing oral arguments, the appeals court dismissed her case in April 2022, ruling it had no jurisdiction. Rowe then appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, which also ruled against her.
Rowe argued Title 20 refers to the APA, which in turn allows litigants to appeal district court decisions to the Appellate Court. The commission countered that Title 20 only refers to the right to appeal its decisions in district court, not to the APA as a whole or the section of that law discussing appellate review.
The Supreme Court agreed with the commission. Rowe is right that legislators created a right to appeal adverse commission decisions, the court said, “but it created one level of judicial review rather than two.”
In his dissent, Chief Justice Fader acknowledged legislators “could have carved a simpler path to establishing” the right to appeal, but the law allows it. Title 20 refers to Section 10-222, which spells out how to appeal adverse commission decisions to district court, but the law says the right is “rendered under the same subtitle” as Section 1023, which provides an express right of appeal to a higher court, he wrote.