By Andy Brack | 2023 may be the year that the South Carolina General Assembly passes a law against hate crimes, but the state Senate first has to move on it. Last year, it thwarted progress on the measure.
Earlier this week, the House voted 84-31 to approve a hate crimes bill long pushed by state Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston. He said it passed the House thanks to a “great bipartisan effort” and leadership by House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.
“This bill is all about ‘We the People’ because hate crime impacts everyone, no matter what creed or color,” Gilliard said Thursday. “The other 48 states [that have it] couldn’t be wrong.
“By virtue of South Carolina’s history, we should’ve been the first state with a hate crime law! This is a great way not only to honor the nine lives that we lost on June 17, 2015, but to all victims that have fallen because of a hate crime.”
On that day, a gunman shot and killed nine worshippers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, including a legislative colleague, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney.
The bill, named in honor of Pinckney, will allow a judge to sentence violent offenders to up to an additional five years in prison if they are indicted and convicted on a state charge that hate motivated their crime against a victim based on race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or physical or mental disability.
With the strong outcome in the House this week, leaders say the climate might be right in the Senate to pass the measure. Last year, it didn’t get a floor vote, bogged down in debate as a portrait of Pinckney looked down on the chamber.
“We are optimistic that this bill will move through the Judiciary Committee and on to the floor,” Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutton, D-Orangeburg, said Thursday. “Last year, the majority party in the Senate resisted taking the bill up for debate, but this is a new year and there is new momentum as a result of the House passage of the bill yesterday.
“As you know, we are one of two states that does not have a bill. It is time for us to establish that it is the policy of this state that those who commit hate crimes in South Carolina will be facing enhanced penalties.”
Wyoming is the only other state without hate crimes legislation.
- Have a comment? Send to feedback@statehousereport.com
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!