ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Legal Newsline) - A law that allows plaintiffs to sue Maryland for up to $400,000 doesn’t include claims based on federal law, the state’s highest court ruled in a case involving a woman who claims she was fired from a state university for political reasons.
Answering a question presented to it by the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled that the waiver of sovereign immunity in the Maryland Tort Claims Act doesn’t extend to suits claiming violations of federal law.
“The plain text of the MTCA’s waiver provision does not contain any indication that it applies to federal statutory claims,” the court ruled in an Aug. 14 decision. “We would expect the General Assembly to speak plainly if it intended to subject the State to suit under any and all statutes that might exist or be enacted in the future, especially statutes that might be enacted by the United States Congress, a separate legislative body over which the General Assembly exercises no control.”
Michelle Williams sued Morgan State University after she was fired in 2017 from her position as director of broadcast operations. Williams claimed her supervisor, Dean DeWayne Wickham, retaliated against her for granting on-air interviews with Republican and Green Party mayoral candidates after then-Mayor Catherine Pugh wasn’t able to attend a scheduled debate. Williams said Wickham told her things would “not end well for her” if she granted air time to the competing candidates.
Morgan State removed the case to federal court after Williams added federal whistleblower claims to her lawsuit. The district court dismissed her case with prejudice but the Fourth Circuit reversed, ruling the question of whether the MTCA waiver applied to federal claims must be answered first.
The Maryland Supreme Court answered that question in the negative.
Williams argued the Maryland Supreme Court previously ruled that a “tort” “encompasses all civil wrongs, including those based in statute, not just those recognized at common law.” The court applied a cap on civil damages to claims under the state’s consumer protection statute, for example.
The Supreme rejected the comparison, saying sovereign immunity is a powerful doctrine that courts must construe strictly. The MTCA represents a limited tradeoff in which plaintiffs get the right to recover up to $400,000 in damages from the state but can’t sue individual employees at all unless they engaged in gross negligence. State legislators wouldn’t extend a waiver of liability into an area of law they don’t control, the court said.
Maryland lawmakers have spoken clearly when they intend federal law to be included in a waiver, the court concluded. The General Assembly specifically waived immunity for county school boards against federal claims in another statute, using the term “any claim.”