Here’s what we’re watching this week in the state capital. As always, live video streams of House and Senate floor debates (and some committee hearings) are available at scstatehouse.gov.
Election bills: The good, the bad, the conspiratorial
Last week the House Constitutional Laws Subcommittee considered a raft of election-related bills, including some that were quite good.
We’ll start with the good news: House bills H. 4589 (Municipal Election Protests) and H. 4590 (Early Voting Hours) both received favorable reports. Both bills are supported by leading voting-rights groups like the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, and since both bills are co-sponsored by the Speaker of the House, we’re optimistic about them passing this year.
The other bills before the committee did not receive a vote because the committee reached its time limit. They include some anti-democratic proposals like H. 4260, which would repeal early voting. Others, like the so-called Hand Count Audit Act (H. 4259), seem to be rooted in conspiratorial notions about rampant election fraud. We even heard testimony last week from folks seeking to revive the long-discredited “zombie voter” hoax from the early 2010s.
We’ll keep you posted if any of these bills advance to the full committee. In the meantime, you can read or watch testimony from our own Matthew Butler at last week’s hearing here on the blog.
Juvenile justice reform
The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice is woefully overdue for a change. Its facilities are overcrowded and understaffed, leaving the children in its care vulnerable to violence, health issues, and unsanitary living conditions.
As our director wrote in December following the tragic death of a 16-year-old boy in a DJJ facility, “The plain truth is that we egregiously over-incarcerate children, many times for non-criminal offenses like truancy or running away.” The legal term for this type of offense, which would not be considered punishable if committed by an adult, is “status offense.”
One piece of legislation that we believe can help address this problem is S. 266, which would reduce the length of time a child could be held for a status offense. Senators Hutto, Jackson, and Shealy pre-filed this bill in December 2022, and it remains active, though it has not gotten a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Members of the committee can be reached via email here. Please help us advance this important reform. To learn more about our work to advance juvenile justice reform in the courts and legislature, visit our Juvenile Justice page.
Higher education: Keeping an eye on tenure rules
The Senate Education Subcommittee meets on Wednesday, January 31, at 10 a.m. in Room 207 of the Gressette Building.
One of the bills up for consideration, S. 538, seeks to regulate tenure at institutions of higher education. The current draft of the bill includes sparse details and seems largely in line with current practice at South Carolina colleges and universities, but we’re keeping an eye on this one. As PEN America noted last year, hard-right lawmakers have sought to restrict or eliminate tenure as a way of eroding institutional independence.
Book bans: Local and statewide
We’ll be updating our map of censorship incidents shortly, as Dorchester School District 2 recently received a request from one person to ban 673 books from its classrooms and libraries.
In the meantime, we’re monitoring censorship proposals at the state level. H. 3728, a classroom censorship bill introduced last year, remains tied up in conference committee after the House and Senate couldn’t agree on its most hardline attacks on speech and inquiry. You can read more about the bill via our Legislation page.
Outside the State House, book banners are also asking the State Board of Education to ban books via a draft regulation (R. 43-170) that we argued forcibly against last year. After more than 600 South Carolinians wrote in to oppose this attack on the freedom to read, the State Board of Education will take up the draft for consideration at its next meeting on Tuesday, February 13 at 1 p.m. in the S.C. Department of Education headquarters (1429 Senate St., Columbia). Mark your calendars. We’ll be there.
