## Facts

- Greenbelt Homes, Inc. operated a cooperative housing project where unit occupancy was tied to cooperative membership and a mutual-ownership contract.
- The standard mutual-ownership contract limited occupancy to the member and the member’s “immediate family,” and permitted termination for violations.
- Raymond and Marguerite Burgess became members and disclosed that their adult daughter, Lynn Kuhr, and her minor son would live with them; the cooperative approved the arrangement.
- Kuhr later permitted an unrelated adult male, Richard Searight, to reside in the unit without requesting a waiver from the cooperative.
- After learning of Searight’s presence, Greenbelt notified the occupants of the rule violation and scheduled a board meeting to consider contract termination.
- Kuhr informed Greenbelt that Searight would leave; he vacated the unit, allegedly against his and Kuhr’s wishes.
- Kuhr filed an administrative complaint alleging housing discrimination based on marital status, asserting that the rule’s enforcement penalized her for being unmarried and cohabiting with an unrelated adult male.
- An MCHR hearing officer dismissed the complaint as a contract breach; the agency appeal board reversed, found discrimination, and ordered Greenbelt to cease discriminating.
- On judicial review, the circuit court granted summary judgment to Greenbelt, rejecting the agency’s discrimination finding; the case reached Maryland’s highest court on certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether enforcing a cooperative housing occupancy rule limiting residents to the member and “immediate family,” as applied to prohibit an unrelated adult male from living with an unmarried woman, constitutes discrimination “because of” marital status under Maryland Code Article 49B, § 20.
2. Whether the agency’s interpretation of “marital status” warranted deference when construing the scope of Article 49B, § 20.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Greenbelt.
- The court held that enforcing the “immediate family” occupancy limitation did not constitute discrimination based on “marital status” under Article 49B, § 20.
- The court rejected the Commission’s broader interpretation of “marital status” and set aside the administrative order.

## Legal Principles

- “Marital status” under Article 49B, § 20 refers to the legal condition of being married, single, divorced, or widowed, not to a claimed right to maintain a particular cohabitation arrangement.
- A household-composition rule restricting occupancy to cooperative members and their “immediate family,” applied uniformly, is not discrimination “because of” marital status merely because it affects unmarried cohabitation.
- Statutory causation (“because of” marital status) is not satisfied where the operative basis for enforcement is noncompliance with a neutral contractual occupancy definition rather than the complainant’s legal marital classification.
- Interpretation of the statutory term “marital status” presented a question of law for the courts; an agency’s contrary construction is not controlling when inconsistent with the statute’s text and structure.

## Conclusion

Maryland’s highest court held that a cooperative may enforce a neutral “member and immediate family” occupancy rule without violating the state housing anti-discrimination law’s prohibition on discrimination based on marital status, and it declined to accept the enforcement agency’s broader reading of “marital status” as protecting unmarried cohabitation.


Maryland Commission on Human Relations v. Greenbelt Homes, Inc., 300 Md. 75, 475 A.2d 1192 (Md. 1984)