Mary Brown v. William L. Lukhard

Summary

The Supreme Court of Virginia held that Code §§ 63.1-105 and 63.1-109, read with Item 498 of the 1981 Appropriations Act, were clear and unambiguous, so the trial court erred in relying on unpublished legislative history to construe the enactments and in sustaining the Department of Welfare's motion for summary judgment. Because Item 498 plainly appropriated $171,656,120 to the ADC program for the second year of the biennium with no restricting language, the court declared invalid the Department's May 21, 1981 regulation terminating ADC eligibility for 18-to-21-year-old students and remanded with directions to award the plaintiffs benefits as if the regulation had not been adopted. The court assumed without deciding that the ADC statutes are enabling rather than mandatory. Justice Poff, joined by Chief Justice Carrico, dissented, reasoning that the lined-out appropriation figure and the unexplained reference number '4520100' created ambiguity resolvable only through legislative history.