Did Maryland workers' compensation cover seasonal and migrant farm laborers in the 1980s?

Plain-English summary

Governor Harry Hughes asked the Attorney General to review Senate Bill 869 for legal sufficiency before signing it. The bill would have amended Article 101, §21(b)(8) of the Maryland Code, which at the time exempted seasonal and migratory farm laborers from workers' compensation coverage except for those who operated machinery. The opinion approved the bill as constitutional but flagged that its text was ambiguous about exactly which farm workers would remain excluded from coverage. Working through the bill's confusing language, the legislative history, and committee reports, the opinion concluded that Senate Bill 869, properly interpreted, would extend workers' compensation coverage to farm workers generally, whether or not they operated machinery, but would still exclude farm workers employed within a 25-mile radius of their permanent residence for 13 weeks a year or less. The opinion urged the legislature to rewrite the underlying statute more clearly in a future session.

Currency note

This opinion was issued in 1984. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here.

An editor's note on the official text records that Senate Bill 869 was enacted as Chapter 751, Laws of Maryland 1984, and that the General Assembly twice enacted further clarifications of its intent, in Chapter 105, Laws of Maryland 1985, and Chapter 242, Laws of Maryland 1986. Maryland's workers' compensation law has since been recodified from Article 101 into the Labor and Employment Article, and farm labor exemptions may have been further amended since 1984 and 1986. Readers should not treat the article and section numbers, or the 25-mile/13-week exclusion described here, as reflecting current Maryland law.

Common questions

Did Maryland's 1984 workers' compensation bill cover all farm workers?
No. This opinion concluded that even with Senate Bill 869's changes, workers' compensation would still exclude farm workers who were employed within a 25-mile radius of their permanent residence and worked 13 weeks a year or less.

Why did the Attorney General need to interpret the bill's language at all?
The opinion described the bill's exemption language as ambiguous and "hardly a model of clarity." It could plausibly be read two different ways: to exclude only farm workers who met a narrow statutory definition of "seasonal or migratory farm laborer" and also lived and worked locally, or to exclude any farm worker meeting the 25-mile/13-week criteria regardless of that definition. The opinion resolved the ambiguity using the bill's legislative history.

How did the opinion figure out what the legislature actually meant?
It looked at the Bill Analysis filed with the Senate Economic Affairs Committee and the Summary of Committee Report filed with the House Constitutional and Administrative Law Committee, both of which described the exclusion in terms of "any person" employed locally and briefly, rather than only workers meeting the narrower statutory definition. That legislative history, along with rules against interpreting statutes to reach an absurd or illogical result, drove the opinion's conclusion.

Did the Attorney General find any problem with the bill that would have stopped it from becoming law?
No. The opinion approved Senate Bill 869 "for legal sufficiency and constitutionality." Its concerns were about the clarity of the bill's drafting, not its constitutionality, and it recommended that the underlying statute be rewritten in a later session to remove the ambiguity.

Background and statutory framework

At the time of this opinion, Article 101, §21(b) of the Maryland Code listed categories of employees covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act. Paragraph (8) of that subsection was the only one that both covered and separately exempted a class of workers: it covered "farming and dairy farming" but exempted "seasonal or migratory farm laborers who do not operate machinery or equipment." Senate Bill 869 amended that paragraph in two ways: it extended coverage to farm work involving machinery operation "whether or not" performed by a seasonal or migratory farm laborer, and it added a definition of "seasonal or migratory farm laborer" that excluded from that definition any worker employed within a 25-mile radius of home for 13 weeks a year or less. Because the bill's use of the newly defined term, combined with the "whether or not" coverage language, was susceptible to more than one reading, the opinion applied Maryland statutory-construction principles disfavoring absurd or illogical results and requiring that no statutory word or phrase be read as superfluous, then turned to the bill's legislative history to resolve the ambiguity in favor of a broad, "any person" reading of the 25-mile/13-week exclusion.

Citations

Statutes:

• Article 101, §21(b)(8) of the Maryland Code (the 1984 farm-labor workers' compensation coverage and exemption provision Senate Bill 869 amended)
• Senate Bill 869 (1984 Regular Session) (bill reviewed in this opinion, extending workers' compensation coverage to farm laborers with a 25-mile/13-week local-work exclusion)
• Chapter 751, Laws of Maryland 1984 (per editor's note, Senate Bill 869 as enacted)
• Chapter 105, Laws of Maryland 1985 (per editor's note, later clarification of legislative intent regarding Chapter 751)
• Chapter 242, Laws of Maryland 1986 (per editor's note, second later clarification of legislative intent regarding Chapter 751)
• 29 U.S.C. §1802 (federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act definition of "day-haul operation," cited to interpret the bill's undefined term)

Cases:

• Kindley v. Governor of Maryland, 289 Md. 620, 625 (1981), construction of a statute that is "unreasonable, illogical or inconsistent with common sense" must be avoided
• Pan American Sulphur Co. v. Department of Assessments and Taxation, 251 Md. 620, 627 (1967), no statute should be construed to reach an absurd result
• State v. Berry, 287 Md. 491, 495 (1980), statutes must be interpreted so no word, clause, sentence, or phrase is rendered nugatory
• Karns v. Liquid Carbonic Corp., 275 Md. 1, 18 (1975), same principle against superfluous statutory language
• Welsh v. Kuntz, 196 Md. 86, 98 (1950), same principle against superfluous statutory language
• Hornbeck v. Somerset County Board of Education, 295 Md. 597, 619-20 (1983), legislative history must be examined where statutory language is ambiguous
• Kelly v. State, 139 Md. 204, 208 (1921), a bill's title can give sufficient notice that coverage applies to only some, not all, members of a described class

Source

• Landing page: https://oag.maryland.gov/resources-info/Pages/attorney-general%E2%80%99s-opinions.aspx
• Original PDF: https://oag.maryland.gov/resources-info/Documents/pdfs/Opinions/1984/Volume69_1984.pdf

Original opinion text

Best-effort transcription from a scanned PDF. Minor errors may remain, the linked PDF is authoritative.

WORKER'S COMPENSATION

Exemptions-Migratory Farm Workers-Analysis Of Provision On Coverage.

May 24, 1984

The Honorable Harry Hughes
Governor

We have reviewed and hereby approve for legal sufficiency and constitutionality Senate Bill 869. We do, however, wish to point out several interpretive questions that are raised by the bill for which remedial legislation is clearly warranted.

I

Discussion

The purpose of Senate Bill 869 is affirmatively expressed in its title, to extend workers' compensation coverage to seasonal and migratory farm laborers under certain circumstances. To accomplish this purpose, the bill amends Article 101, §21(b)(8) of the Maryland Code, which currently exempts seasonal and migratory farm laborers from coverage, except for those who operate machinery. In doing so, Senate Bill 869 defines "seasonal or migratory farm laborer"; no definition is provided in the current law.

As §21(b)(8) is currently worded, it is hardly a model of clarity. First, the introductory sentence provides that "[t]he following shall constitute employees subject to the provisions of this act, except as exempted under subsection (c) of this section". (Emphasis added.) There follow eleven paragraphs setting forth categories of employed persons who are covered by the Act. Only paragraph (8) provides both for coverage and its own exemption, "provided, however, that this section shall not apply to seasonal or migratory farm laborers who do not operate machinery or equipment". No exemption for any category of seasonal or migratory workers is provided in subsection (c).

Second, although every other paragraph of §21(b) refers to the type of employees covered, e.g., "any person", "every officer", "student teachers", "members", paragraph (8) refers to an industry, "farming and dairy farming". The inconsistent reference to an industry in paragraph (8) alone is curious in light of the introductory sentence, which provides that specified persons constitute employees subject to the act. Even more curious is that paragraph's definition of "farmer," when the term "farmer" is nowhere used in the paragraph.

Senate Bill 869 does not remedy the above described problems with §21(b)(8). Rather, it amends the section in two major respects. First, persons involved in the "operation of any machinery connected with any phase of soil, crop, or animal management, construction and repairs of machinery and fixtures, and the handling of any crops or animals with or without machinery" are employees covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act "whether or not [those activities are] performed by a seasonal or migratory farm laborer". Second, the bill defines "seasonal or migratory farm laborer" and excludes from that definition certain farm workers:

"(ii) For purposes of this section, 'seasonal or migratory farm laborer' means a person who is engaged in agricultural employment of a seasonal or other temporary nature and who is either (a) absent overnight from his permanent place of residence or (b) transported or caused to be transported to and from the place of employment by means of a day-haul operation.

(iii) For purposes of this section, 'seasonal and migratory farm laborer' shall not include any person who is employed within a 25-mile radius of his or her permanent place of residence and for not more than 13 weeks per year."

There are several possible ways of reading the bill, none of which comport literally with the muddled and ambiguous language of §21(b)(8). For the reasons discussed below, however, we believe that the bill, if signed, must be interpreted as follows: Any person, including a seasonal or migratory farm laborer, who performs farm work for a farmer who has three or more full-time employees or a yearly payroll for his or her full-time employees of $15,000 or more is covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act unless that person is employed within a 25-mile radius of his or her permanent place of residence and is employed for 13 weeks a year or less. As explained more fully below, this reading of the bill is consistent with the evident intent of the General Assembly.

The difficulty with Senate Bill 869 lies with its definitions. It does not make much sense to narrowly define a class of farm workers ("seasonal or migratory farm laborers") in a bill that, at the same time, broadly provides for workers' compensation coverage for all farm work "whether or not" performed by that particular class. We nevertheless must presume that the General Assembly defined the term "seasonal or migratory farm laborer" for some purpose and, therefore, that that purpose, notwithstanding the use of the broad "whether or not" language, was to include certain seasonal and migratory farm laborers, but not all, within the protections afforded by the Workmen's Compensation Act. This interpretation is consistent with the title of the bill, which describes the bill as "providing coverage for seasonal and migratory farm laborers under the workmen's compensation law under certain circumstances." (Emphasis added.) Thus, not all seasonal and migratory farm laborers were intended for coverage.

The next step in the analysis is to determine exactly who the General Assembly intended to exclude. There are only two possibilities. Neither construction is free from doubt; the bill on its face is susceptible of more than one meaning.

One possible interpretation is that the General Assembly intended to exclude from coverage only those persons who are "seasonal or migratory farm laborers" as defined in subparagraph (ii) and who meet the criteria set forth in subparagraph (iii). The fact that subparagraph (iii) uses the defined term in stating who is not included supports this interpretation. That is, subparagraph (iii) does not, for example, simply and clearly provide that "any person who works within 25 miles of his or her home for 13 weeks or less is not an employee subject to the provisions of this Act." Rather, it uses the defined term and states "'seasonal and migrant farm laborer' shall not include" certain persons. Thus, in effect, it provides that of those defined as "seasonal or migratory farm laborers", only those who meet certain criteria are excluded from coverage. Arguably, however, this interpretation would lead to an absurd and illogical result, excluding from coverage only a handful of people: those persons who work within 25 miles of their residence for 13 weeks a year or less and are either absent overnight from their residence or transported by means of a day-haul operation.1 Virtually no workers who live within 25 miles of a farm would be absent overnight from their homes. And only a few who live within 25 miles would travel by day-haul. Moreover, it is illogical to ascribe to the General Assembly the intention to require coverage for a seasonal farm worker who walks or drives less than 25 miles to work while excluding from coverage those workers who are picked up by a van or bus operated by someone else. Construction of a statute which is "unreasonable, illogical or inconsistent with common sense" must be avoided. Kindley v. Governor of Maryland, 289 Md. 620, 625 (1981). No statute should be construed in such a way to reach an absurd result. Pan American Sulphur Co. v. Department of Assessments and Taxation, 251 Md. 620, 627 (1967).

The other possible interpretation is that the General Assembly intended that all persons who meet the criteria in subparagraph (iii) be excluded from coverage, whether or not they otherwise are "seasonal or migratory farm laborers" within the meaning of subparagraph (ii). Arguably, this interpretation would render both subparagraph (ii) and the phrase "whether or not performed by a seasonal or migratory farm worker" superfluous and violate the standard principle of statutory construction that statutes must be interpreted so that no word, clause, sentence, or phrase be rendered nugatory. See State v. Berry, 287 Md. 491, 495 (1980); Karns v. Liquid Carbonic Corp., 275 Md. 1, 18 (1975); Welsh v. Kuntz, 196 Md. 86, 98 (1950).

Both interpretations have the apparently unintended result of excluding from coverage various persons currently covered by the act, e.g., those local (i.e., within 25 miles), seasonal or temporary (i.e., 13 weeks a year or less) workers who operate machinery. While unfortunate, that fact creates no constitutional defect. The title adequately gives notice of this possibility. The title describes the bill as "providing coverage for seasonal and migratory farm laborers under the workmen's compensation law under certain circumstances." (Emphasis added.) The phrase "under certain circumstances" provides sufficient notice that coverage is required for certain, but not all, seasonal and migratory farm workers. Kelly v. State, 139 Md. 204, 208 (1921).

As stated above, neither interpretation is free from doubt. Moreover, each violates one or more principles of statutory construction. Thus, because the language of the bill is ambiguous and susceptible of more than one meaning, the legislative history of the bill must be examined in order to ascertain the intent of the General Assembly. Hornbeck v. Somerset County Board of Education, 295 Md. 597, 619-20 (1983). That history clearly reveals that the General Assembly intended to exclude from workers' compensation coverage all those farm workers who are employed within a 25-mile radius of their permanent places of residence and for 13 weeks a year or less.

The file in each committee that held a hearing on Senate Bill 869 supports this conclusion. The Bill Analysis filed in the records of the Senate Economic Affairs Committee states that "the definition excludes from coverage any person who is employed within a 25-mile intrastate radius of his or her permanent place of residence for not more than 13 weeks per year." (Emphasis added.)2 See Committee Report System Bill Analysis, Senate Bill 869 at 2. Similarly, the Summary of Committee Report filed in the records of the House Constitutional and Administrative Law Committee states that "[a]s introduced, the bill would still exclude persons employed within a 25 mile intrastate distance from home for 13 weeks a year or less". (Emphasis added.) See Committee Report System Summary of Committee Report, Senate Bill 869 at 1. It is significant that both Committees broadly referred to the excluded class as "any person" and "persons" rather than more narrowly as "seasonal or migratory farm workers". This demonstrates the legislative intent not to limit the excluded class to those farm workers who first meet the criteria set forth in subparagraph (ii).

II

Conclusion

In summary, as currently worded, the Workmen's Compensation Act covers only certain seasonal and migratory farm labor, those who operate machinery. Senate Bill 869 extends the Act's coverage to farm workers whether or not they operate machinery, while excluding from coverage those farm workers who are employed within a twenty-five mile radius of his or her principal place of residence for 13 weeks a year or less. As we have pointed out, neither the current statute nor this bill is a model of statutory drafting. If this bill is signed, we strongly urge that §21(b)(8) be rewritten in its entirety during the next session so as to specify those included and those excluded.

Stephen H. Sachs, Attorney General

Catherine M. Shultz
Assistant Attorney General

Editor's Note: Senate Bill 869 was signed into law as Chapter 751, Laws of Maryland 1984. Subsequently, the General Assembly has twice enacted clarifications of its intent with respect to Chapter 751 (Senate Bill 869). See Chapter 105, Laws of Maryland 1985 and Chapter 242, Laws of Maryland 1986. In order to provide useful background to this series of enactments, the bill review letter on Senate Bill 869 is published here in a slightly revised format.

1 Although "day-haul operation" is not defined in Senate Bill 869, we understand that the term is a term of art. It is defined in the federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act as "the assembly of workers at a pick-up point waiting to be hired and employed, transportation of such workers to agricultural employment, and the return of such workers to a drop-off point on the same day." 29 U.S.C. §1802.

2 The word "intrastate" was deleted by the Senate Economic Affairs Committee.