COLUMBIA – The South Carolina House of Representatives passed its bipartisan hate crimes bill March 8, advancing legislation long sought by Statehouse Democrats.
A large number of Republicans joined in and, if the bill receives the governor's signature, it would end the Palmetto State's holdout as one of only two states without hate crimes laws on the books.
“This bill will tell the state and the world we are one in South Carolina. We stand for progress. We stand for unity,” Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Charleston Democrat who has long championed the effort to pass hate crimes legislation, told reporters after the bill’s passage.
It remains to be seen what the state Senate will do with the bill, which flew through the House last session but then languished in a Senate committee before dying with the end of the session.
The bill passed the House 84-31 with the support of all the lower chamber’s Democrats and most of its Republicans, including much of the House’s GOP leadership. It also has the support of the state’s civil rights organizations and business community.
Wyoming is the only other state without a hate crimes statute.
Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter (left), and House Clerk Charles Reid review several amendments to a hate crimes bill to see if they are out of order, on March 8, 2023. Jeffrey Collins/AP
There was an effort to oppose the bill spearheaded by the ultra-conservative South Carolina Freedom Caucus, whose leaders argued that the bill is “woke ideology.”
Supporters of the bill from both parties dismissed the attacks as unserious political theater.
Gilliard had long attempted to make hate crimes a separate charge, but that effort lacked momentum until 2019 when Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Columbia, pared the bill down to make hate crimes a sentencing enhancement to a conviction for a violent crime.
This session’s version of the bill, named the “Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crimes Act” after the former Charleston lawmaker and pastor murdered by white supremacist Dylann Roof at Emanuel AME Church in 2015, bears a close resemblance to Bernstein’s proposal.
House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, listens during a debate over a hate crimes bill on March 8, 2023. Jeffrey Collins/AP
Under the legislation, if a judge or a jury determines the evidence showed a defendant convicted of a violent crime targeted their victim based on race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or a disability, they could be sentenced up to an additional five years or fined up to $10,000.
In 2021, a similar version of the bill passed by a wide margin in the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the legislation to the floor of the upper chamber, but it never got a floor debate.
GOP senators blocking the bill declined to publicly explain their opposition, despite increasingly fervent demands from Gilliard and other Democrats as the session drew to a close.
Democrats acknowledged the legislation’s fate rests once again with the Senate but said they’ve continued to lobby their counterparts, especially emphasizing the business community’s support.
“We pass now the instruments of healing to the Senate and ask them to rise to occasion,” said Rep. Ivory Thigpen, a Columbia Democrat who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus.
During the floor debate on March 8, conservative Anderson Republican Rep. John McCravy tried to cut gender, sex and sexual orientation from the bill, arguing it was “Trojan horse language” that would promulgate “leftist” theories of gender and sexuality.
But deleting the terms “gender” and “sexual orientation” would be tantamount to saying, “it’s okay to go burn down some transgender person’s house,” said Rep. Jason Elliot, a Greenville Republican who is the state’s first openly gay legislator.
It was supportive Republicans like Elliot, who led the defense of the bill on the floor.
“It’s just the right thing to do. It reflects who we are,” Elliot said. “We’re not saying you have to love anybody.”
The far-right Freedom Caucus put up nearly 20 amendments adding various protected classes for categories like age and political beliefs as well as hair color and sports team affiliation.
The Freedom Caucus had already offered a series of amendments that were batted down one after the other earlier in the day to two other bills, and their colleagues’ patience had clearly waned by the afternoon. Republicans repeatedly objected to the amendments as frivolous.
House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, ruled some of them out of order and others were withdrawn by the Freedom Caucus.
South Carolina Rep. Josiah Magnuson, R-Campobello, speaks during a debate over a hate crimes bill on March 8, 2023. Magnuson proposed many of the amendments that were eventually withdrawn or ruled out of order. Jeffrey Collins/AP
Rep. Richie Yow, R-Chesterfield, himself a fervent conservative, said the Freedom Caucus’ amendments “make a mockery” of a serious bill meant to help people.
Gilliard credited the House Republicans for “standing up with backbone to do the right thing.”
Democrats have been unable to advance many of their priorities since being relegated to super-minority status in the lower chamber after the last election, but the vote was a welcome reversal of fortune.
“We don’t always see victories like this, sadly,” Bernstein said.
“South Carolina will now, hopefully, not be the last state to take a stand against hate,” she said.
