SC Green is active at the South Carolina State House monitoring legislation and regulations that could impact members. We advocate for sensible policies that help our industry thrive while protecting the environment. We work with lawmakers in the South Carolina General Assembly as well as regulators and state agencies such as Clemson Regulatory Services, SC Department of Health and Environmental Control, SC Department of Agriculture, and others.
The South Carolina General Assembly has been busy at the start of the 2024 legislative session. Bills acted on thus far include:
“Constitutional Carry” Gun Legislation
The Senate spent several days in late January debating “whether anyone who can legally own a gun can carry their weapon in public.” The bill passed the House in February 2023. The Senate debates included a marathon session that did not end until minutes before midnight.
The Senate ultimately “passed a controversial House bill that would allow any adult without a felony to carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit.”
The bill, called “permitless carry” by opponents and “constitutional carry” by proponents, “would make obtaining a concealed weapons permit — and the training and background checks that come with it — optional while also lowering the age to obtain a handgun from 21 to 18 and allowing gun owners to store their handgun anywhere in their car.”
Some members, such as Spartanburg County Senator Shane Martin, were thrilled with the outcome. While others, such as Richland County Senator Mia McLeod said the bill would “turn (South Carolina) into the wild, wild west.”
The final version of the bill received 28 votes in favor and 15 against. Notably, the yes votes included one Democrat (Chester County Senator Mike Fanning), while the no votes included Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Luke Rankin of Horry County.
Rankin spoke at length before the conclusion of the debate in the Senate. He said that he was willing to suffer the political consequences of opposing the bill as he was voting his conscience and following the recommendations of law enforcement officers in his district and throughout South Carolina. Rankin said that the bill was being driven by “dark money” groups from Texas and other states. He asked his colleagues if they would “stand with our men in blue? Are we going to stand with our women in blue?…We stand with them only when it’s convenient. We listen to them only when it’s convenient, and that’s a travesty in our state.”
While the bill has both chambers, there is still work to be done for the bill’s proponents as the House rejected the Senate’s amendments this Thursday. This means the bill will move to a conference committee made up of three members of the House and Senate. These conferees will be tasked with crafting a compromise that is acceptable to both bodies.
Child Protection Legislation Passed in House
Leadership in the House has made clear that they intend to pass several bills this session that they say will protect children from various forms of harm. One such bill that prompted a lengthy debate in the early weeks of session was a bill (H. 4624) concerning treatment for transgender youth.
The bill passed by the House this week “would bar health professionals from performing gender-transition surgeries, prescribing puberty-blocking drugs and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18 years old. People under 26 could not use Medicaid to cover the costs for such care, and school employees could not withhold knowledge of a student’s transgender identity from their legal guardians.”
Republican supporters of the bill called it an important protection for youth who were being pressured into irreversible decisions.
Democratic opponents of the bill called it unnecessary election year campaign fodder. They “accused Republicans of political fearmongering and said the bill will mean further ostracization for transgender youth if it becomes law.”
Additionally, last week the House passed a pair of bills intended “to keep minors safe from the dangers of the internet.” One bill (H. 4700), known as the South Carolina Social Media Regulation Act, “would require social media companies make ‘commercially reasonable efforts’ to verify users are at least 18 years old and then only allow minors access if they have their parent’s or guardian’s permission.”
Additionally, the bill “would require those companies (to) prevent minors from accessing content that encourages use of force, self-harm, and the destruction of school property or displays visual depictions of sexual conduct.”
Another bill (H. 3424) passed this week “requires websites that publish pornographic material, as defined by state code, to also verify users must be at least 18 to access.”
The sole vote against these bills came from Bamberg County Democratic Representative Justin Bamberg. He “argued the law would be nearly impossible to enforce and unduly impact peoples’ civil liberties when it should be parents, not government, who enforce what their children can or can’t access.”
The South Carolina bills are part of “a larger, national reckoning around child online safety.” “Similar laws to those being weighed by South Carolina are currently being challenged in several state courts around the country. The social media platforms have so far largely declined to elaborate on-record on whether they will be able to comply with South Carolina’s proposed legislation, saying only that they don’t want to grapple with complying with a patchwork of state-level laws.”
Other items of note include:
Medical Marijuana Legislation
The Senate began discussing S. 423 (Compassionate Care Act) on the floor this week. The bill “would allow South Carolinians with certain conditions, such as cancer, multiple sclerosis or terminal illnesses to be prescribed certain forms of medicinal marijuana.”
The bill’s lead sponsor Senator Tom Davis of Beaufort has pointed out that “the bill is considered conservative compared to other states’ medical marijuana laws, limiting the delivery method to topical, oral or vaporized products only. Burning the plant and smoking are prohibited.”
Despite this assurance, some senators remained skeptical that the proposal would open the door to legalized recreational marijuana. Horry County Senator Greg Hembree “cited recreational use and the damage it can cause in young people. He also spoke to the potential misuse of the drug by doctors and the fiscal impact…Law enforcement and distribution concerns were among other issues Hembree and opponents have with the .”
The debate is allowing supporters and opponents to revisit the debates of past sessions. “In 2022, the Senate passed a similar version of the bill, but it failed in the House on a technicality.”
Some House members are still outspoken in their opposition to the bill. Greenwood Representative John McCray said “if (S. 423) was simply allowing somebody that’s dying of cancer to use marijuana or something like that, I don’t think anybody would oppose that…But a lot of people like me see this bill as the first step towards recreational marijuana. And there are a lot of things in the bill that indicate that…This bill is recreational marijuana part one.”
The Senate will resume discussion on S. 423 on Tuesday afternoon.
Judicial Elections / Judicial Reform
A simmering conflict over judicial elections and judicial reform boiled over this week as “the House speaker and the Senate president (took) the rare step of addressing their respective chambers to blast” the other body. House Speaker Murrell Smith “took the podium around noon (on Wednesday) to chastise the Senate after the upper chamber declined to set a joint session to elect a lineup of more than two dozen judges amid the strife over how far to go in reforming the state’s judiciary.”
Later that afternoon, Senate President Thomas Alexander “fired back in an unsparing speech…supporting the call for delay in exchange for reform.” The fight was prompted by the delay in judicial elections that were supposed to take place on Wednesday.
The resolution setting the date and time of the elections has not been agreed to as “several senators, led by Rock Hill Republican Wes Climer and Columbia Democrat Dick Harpootlian, are threatening to filibuster the resolution to set that joint session date until action is taken on changes to judge selection, like giving the governor more power in the process and less to legislators who are also lawyers.”
There is not a clear path forward for a resolution of this impasse, but House and Senate committees have been active on the matter in recent weeks. A House ad hoc committee formed to study the issue “sent a list of 16 recommendations back to the speaker (last week) including the addition of gubernatorial appointees to the judicial screening panel and setting term limits for the panel.” Also, a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee took testimony this past week on the issue.
