FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 7, 2006

CONTACT:
David Rocah, Staff Attorney
410-889-8555

BALTIMORE – Responding to news today that Del. Don Dwyer (R-Anne Arundel) has introduced a resolution seeking to remove from office Judge M. Brooke Murdock – the Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge who recently held that the 1973 Maryland law prohibiting same-sex marriage violated the State Constitution – the ACLU of Maryland strongly objected to the move as an assault on the judicial branch of government and the principle of checks and balances.

“This goes too far,” said ACLU staff attorney David Rocah. “It is a dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, and patently frivolous endeavor, which clearly demonstrates an utter contempt for the rule of law.

In order to be removed by “address” of the General Assembly, both houses must concur by a two-thirds majority. The Maryland Constitution does not specify what can constitute grounds for an “address.” Only one judge has ever been removed from office in Maryland via an “address” by the legislature. On March 12, 1860, Gov. T. H. Hicks signed a bill removing Judge Henry Stump, Judge of the Criminal Court of Baltimore, based on charges that he had been intoxicated and asleep on the bench.

“The true danger to our constitutional democracy comes from irresponsible attempts to remove judges who conscientiously attempt to enforce the limits the constitution places on legislative action, even when doing so is politically unpopular,” added Rocah. “That’s what judges have been doing from the birth of the Republic, and its precisely what judges are supposed to do in this country. The idea that a judge should be removed because you disagree with her decisions is not only radical, it’s a deliberate attempt to intimidate judges from performing their duty.”

Del. Dwyer charges that Judge Murdock should be removed from office “for misbehavior in office, wilful neglect of duty and incompetency.” The truth is simply that he disagrees with Judge Murdock’s decision and seeks to remove her for doing her job – weighing the constitutionality of laws enacted by Maryland’s General Asssembly.

This January, Judge Murdock issued a decision in the ACLU’s case, Deane & Polyak v. Conaway, finding that denying same-sex couples the ability to marry violates the state constitution’s Equal Rights Amendment, which protects against discrimination based on sex. The court ruled, “Whentradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest.”

The ACLU’s marriage fairness case is now before the state’s Court of Special Appeals. Ultimately, Maryland’s high court, the Court of Appeals, will have the final say on the constitutionality of the current denial of hundreds of legal protections afforded married couples to the thousands of committed same-sex partners and their families that live in Maryland.

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