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Maryland civil-rights commission urges funding, credits mediation and AI for cutting case backlog
Summary
Maryland Commission on Civil Rights officials told the House Health and Social Services Subcommittee that a modest fiscal 2027 increase and operational changes — relaunching mediation and using AI-assisted intake — are helping reduce a multi-year backlog but staffing gaps remain.
The House Health and Social Services Subcommittee heard on the Maryland Commission on Civil Rightss budget for fiscal 2027 and a status update on case processing, backlog reduction and new operational tools.
At the outset, Connor Brown, a policy analyst with the Department of Legislative Services, said the commission's fiscal 2027 allowance increases by about $517,000, or 7.5%, to $7,400,000, and that roughly 88% of the budget supports personnel. Brown's presentation highlighted long processing times: employment cases represented a large share of cases open more than a year and average resolution times have not met the agencys internal benchmarks between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025. DLS recommended committee narrative asking the commission to report on measures to reduce backlogs.
Cleveland Horton, executive director of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, told the panel the agency has restructured leadership, broadened outreach and reintroduced an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) unit. "We've reimplemented our ADR unit...through the implementation of that so far, we've been able to retrieve over $500,000 in monetary relief for victims of unlawful discrimination and drive down some of that backlog," Horton said.
Horton said staffing shortages remain the principal constraint. He described stressed frontline roles and competition from the private sector for civil-rights officers and attorneys, which limits retention. "We're probably looking at somewhere between 75 to 80 staff as a whole in order for us to address the entire backlog and to be able to keep up consistently with where the work is," Horton said when asked how many additional staff would be required to eliminate the backlog.
The commission is also deploying technology to streamline intake and investigation workflows. Horton described an AI-assisted process to translate preliminary questionnaires into official complaint forms and to summarize recorded interviews for staff review. "We're not using AI to reduce the number of employees we need. We're using AI to assist the employees that we do have," he said, stressing that staff continue to verify outputs.
Committee members asked about recruitment, case assignment delays and legal timelines; Horton said cases that reach probable cause wait in a legal queue until counsel is available so the agency avoids missing procedural deadlines that could result in dismissals.
What happens next: DLS has recommended committee narrative requesting a written report on measures to reduce backlogs and recruitment efforts. The subcommittee did not take a formal vote on the agency budget during the hearing.
