Hillyard v. Board of Supervisors

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. By per curiam order of August 17, 1970, we reversed the ruling of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County that the appellant Robert L. Hillyard could not run for the House of Delegates from Delegate District One of Montgomery County because he had not lived for a year in that District. Our reasons for disagreeing with the views of Judge Mathias are these. ¹⁵² The Supreme Court, in Maryland Committee v. Tawes, 377 U. S. 656 , 12 L.Ed.2d 595, 607 , suggested that: “With the Maryland constitutional provisions relating to legislative apportionment hereby held unconstitutional, the Maryland Legislature presumably has the inherent power to enact at least temporary reapportionment legislation pending adoption of state constitutional provisions relating to legislative apportionment which comport with federal constitutional requirements.” The legislature could and did take a hint and at the Special Session of 1965 enacted the statutes now appearing in the Code (1969 Cum. Supp.) in Art. 40, §§ 42 to 42E (General Assembly) under the subtitle “Apportionment” to provide, among other things, for legislative districts in the more populous counties.

Section 42B (e) provides : “All Delegates in a county which has districts shall be residents of and elected from their respective districts, and they shall not be elected from the entire county; and all Delegates in Baltimore City shall be residents and elected from their respective districts, and they shall not be elected at large from Baltimore City. The Delegates shall have qualifications and residential requirements as provided in § 9 of Article 3 of the Constitution of Maryland.” Section 9 of Article III of the Constitution of Maryland provides: “No person shall [be] eligible as a Senator or Delegate, who at the time of his election, is not a citizen of the State of Maryland, and who has not resided therein, for at least three years, next preceding the day of his election, and the last year thereof, in the County, or in the Legislative District of Baltimore City, which he may be chosen to represent * * *.” ¹⁵³ It is conceded that the appellant Hillyard has resided in Maryland for the specified three-year period and has been a resident of Montgomery County for the last year of that period. It is undisputed that he moved from another part of Montgomery County to Legislative District Number One of Montgomery County on June 25, 1970, and has since been a resident of that District. The question at issue is whether Hillyard must have been a resident of the District for the year preceding the election in order to be eligible to run for the legislature as a representative of that District or whether his residence in the County for at least a year will suffice.

Judge Mathias said: “In construing a statute or a constitutional provision, the duty of the Court is to ascertain and give effect to the intent and purpose of such statute or constitutional provision. It seems to us to be the clear intent and purpose of Section 9 of Article III [of the Constitution] to require that a delegate reside for a year before election day in the geographic area which he may be chosen to represent, be that a legislative district in either a county or Baltimore City, or an entire county. If we pay heed to the punctuation of Section 9 of Article III, we will note that it does not say that a delegate need live only for a year in the county. What it says is that a delegate must live in the county which he may be chosen to represent for a year next