## Facts

- Maryland enacted a detailed statutory scheme regulating cigarette vending machines, including state licensing requirements, renewal terms, labeling requirements, inspections, and criminal penalties for noncompliance.
- Allied Vending, Inc. and D.C. Vending Co., Inc. held state licenses to operate cigarette vending machines, including in the Cities of Bowie and Takoma Park.
- Takoma Park enacted an ordinance requiring a municipal permit to place a cigarette vending machine and limiting permits to locations not generally accessible to or frequented by minors; it also barred machines in certain unmonitored areas and placed the burden on applicants to show minor inaccessibility.
- Bowie enacted a similar ordinance requiring a municipal license and restricting placement to locations not generally accessible to minors; it authorized revocation or nonrenewal for repeated distributions to minors or placement without a city license.
- The vendors challenged both ordinances, asserting that the state statutory scheme occupied the field and barred additional municipal licensing and placement rules.

## Issues

1. Whether Maryland’s comprehensive cigarette vending-machine licensing and regulatory scheme impliedly preempted municipal ordinances requiring additional local permits and restricting where state-licensed cigarette vending machines could be placed.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed the circuit court’s judgments upholding the ordinances.
- The court held that the state cigarette vending-machine statutory scheme impliedly preempted the Bowie and Takoma Park ordinances.
- Because the ordinances regulated a field occupied by state law, they were invalid.

## Legal Principles

- Local ordinances are impliedly preempted when the General Assembly’s statutory scheme shows an intent to occupy an entire regulatory field.
- A comprehensive state regime—covering licensing standards, duration and renewal, operational conditions, labeling, inspection, and penalties—can evidence legislative intent for exclusive statewide regulation.
- Municipal police power to protect public health and minors’ welfare cannot support local regulation that adds parallel licensing layers or substantive operating restrictions in a field the state has occupied.

## Conclusion

Maryland’s statutory regulation of cigarette vending machines constituted a comprehensive statewide system that left no room for municipalities to impose separate permit requirements or location restrictions on state-licensed vending machines, rendering the Bowie and Takoma Park ordinances preempted and invalid.


Allied Vending, Inc. v. City of Bowie, 332 Md. 279, 631 A.2d 77 (Md. 1993)