STATEHOUSE REPORT | ISSUE 23.33 | Aug. 16, 2024
BIG STORY: On S.C.’s lawsuits against the feds
MORE NEWS: Schools closer to banning cell phones
LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: A little A.I. might help
COMMENTARY, Brack: Moore has juice with Kamala
SPOTLIGHT: The Felkel Group
MYSTERY PHOTO: Which town?
FEEDBACK: Good column on home hospice
S.C.’s lawsuits: Partisan or needed check on feds?
By Jack O’Toole, Capitol bureau | When S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson sued the Biden administration for what his office said was at least the 50th time last week – in this case, over health care for children brought to the United States illegally – some Palmetto State political observers said they were reminded of an old joke.
Q: In state politics, what does “A.G.” stand for?
A: Aspiring governor.
“It’s extremely obvious that Alan Wilson is going to run for governor in the next cycle,” said former S.C. Democratic Party Chair Trav Robertson. “And the only way he consolidates his base is by consistently wasting tax dollars by filing frivolous lawsuits.”
What’s more, Robertson says, is that Democrats plan to make those lawsuits a major issue the next time they see Wilson’s name on a general election ballot.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Robertson said. “He can solidify his base, but these lawsuits are going to come back and be a serious bone of contention with swing voters in South Carolina.”
Wilson spokesman Robert Kittle pushed back against the charge in a Tuesday statement to Statehouse Report.
“This has never been about politics or any ambitions that Attorney General Wilson may or may not have,” Kittle said. “He brings these lawsuits, or joins them, when he feels like any president oversteps his constitutional authority. Attorney General Wilson has always made it clear that he fights to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.”
But academics who study federalism — that is, the relationship between the federal government and the states — say neither of those explanations captures the whole story. Wilson’s stream of lawsuits aren’t just good politics for an aspiring governor – or good constitutional stewardship by the state’s top lawyer.
The suits are , they say, part of a larger effort by state attorneys general to seize a share of national policy-making power – an effort that started small in the late 1990s, grew slowly through the early 2000s and exploded during the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Litigating ‘the most hot-button issues of the day’
Paul Nolette is the director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University and the author of Federalism on Trial: State Attorneys General and National Policymaking in Contemporary America.
“One of the most important developments of the last couple decades with state A.G.s has been their emergence on the national stage,” Nolette told Statehouse Report in a Monday interview. “They’re getting much more involved in national issues, [including] some of the most hot-button topics of the day.”
A look at the federal lawsuits and filings that Wilson has brought since Biden took office, often jointly with other Republican state attorneys general, seems to confirm that “hot-button” characterization. Here’s a sampling of headlines from the attorney general’s website:
- Wilson files lawsuit to stop vaccine mandate for healthcare workers
- Wilson joins multistate action to end CDC’s unlawful mask mandate
- Wilson again fights Biden’s unlawful student debt cancellation
- Wilson joins coalition against Biden administration’s Title IX attack on parental rights and women’s sports
- Wilson sues Biden administration to protect Second Amendment
- Wilson joins 24-state lawsuit to block President Biden’s Head Start mandates
- Wilson files brief challenging the FDA’s defiance of federal and state law in approving abortion drugs
In addition, prior to Biden’s swearing in, Wilson joined a Republican friend of the court brief challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Partisanship or needed check on power?
While there’s no disagreement about the partisan nature of recent state attorney general interventions in federal policy-making, people who’ve studied the issue are split on the implications.
Nolette, who maintains a detailed database of federal cases brought by state attorneys general, sees the clear partisanship running through the numbers as worrisome.
According to the database, Democratic attorneys general brought more than 97% of the cases against the Trump administration, and Republican attorneys general have brought more than 95% of the cases against Biden. Wilson, for instance, filed only two cases under Trump, as opposed to the 50-plus under Biden. Overall, Democrats won 83% of their cases and Republicans had won 76% through 2023.
“It’s gotten very, very partisan and polarized, like the rest of the political system,” Nolette said. “And often with issues that don’t necessarily have anything to do directly with the state, but instead have more to do with a commitment to a broader ideological vision.”
Moreover, he says he’s concerned about the lack of subject-area expertise state attorneys general bring to many of these cases.
“A lot of these areas are very complicated, whether you’re talking about the Clean Air Act or Medicaid fraud or even some parts of civil rights law,” Nolette said. “When it comes to some of these policy-specific areas, if A.G.s are driven largely by ideological or partisan concerns, that’s a problem.”
But Charleston City Councilman Mike Seekings, a former Charleston School of Law professor who practices constitutional law, argues the attorneys general as a group are performing an essential public service, regardless of partisan motivations.
“In the end, attorneys general are there in part to protect states when there are failings at the federal level,” Seekings said. “They’re a check and balance against federal overreach that affects individual states or states collectively.”
Furthermore, he says, we’re living through an era when congressional dysfunction has made that check on presidential authority more important than it might have been 20 years ago, when Congress was still capable of performing its oversight duties.
“At the congressional level, there’s so much gridlock and partisan bickering that they don’t act at all,” Seekings said. “And attorneys general have been in a position to step in and fill that void.”
If the old joke about A.G.s is right, that’s a debate South Carolina voters may be asked to settle when the next governor’s race rolls around in 2026.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
S.C. schools one step closer to banning cell phones
By Jack O’Toole, Capitol bureau | South Carolina is one step closer to banning cell phones in public schools after the state Board of Education gave initial approval Aug. 13 to a “model policy” that would apply to K-12 schools throughout the state.
The board’s action was in response to a 2024 state budget amendment requiring schools to prohibit the use of “personal electronic communication devices by students” during the class day.
Under the model policy as drafted:
- All internet-connected electronic devices – cell phones, smart watches, tablets, gaming devices and more – must be secured in a locker, backpack or other school-designated location from first to last bell. Schools can also ban the devices from campus.
- Students with certain medical conditions and those who serve as first responders are exempt.
- Students who violate the policy will be subject to “progressive consequences … and disciplinary enforcement procedures.”
In an accompanying background document, the S.C. Department of Education (SCDE) offered three rationales for the policy:
- Social science studies linking smart-phone use with poor academic performance and teen mental-health issues;
- A survey of 9,000 S.C. teachers showing strong support for a statewide ban; and
- Recent moves by other states to prohibit the technology.
SCDE spokesman Jason Raven told Statehouse Report the department is “thankful” the ban is moving forward.
“Research and feedback show that the widespread use of smartphones in schools has created serious academic, mental health, and safety challenges,” Raven said in a Thursday statement. “All South Carolina students deserve to flourish in a learning environment free of constant digital distractions.”
Board members are expected to give final approval to the policy in September, with local district implementation required by January 2025.
$38 million in unclaimed funds returned
The state of South Carolina has returned more than $38 million in unclaimed property to residents over the past year, according to a Friday news release from state Treasurer Curtis Loftis.
“I continue to be humbled by the calls and letters of gratitude I receive from people who have found money they didn’t know belonged to them,” Loftis said. “That’s why I am so passionate about encouraging people to check their names on our website to claim what rightfully belongs to them.”
The Treasurer’s Office says it has returned $365 million since 2011, with almost $1 billion still waiting to be claimed. The money comes into the treasurer’s custody when businesses are unable to find the rightful owners of property in their possession.
“I really needed some new tires for the car but didn’t have the cash to afford them,” one Anderson County resident told the Treasurer’s Office after receiving the funds. “I put it in God’s hands, and he answered my prayers.”
In other recent news
State working to fix broken mental health system. South Carolina is more than two years into an aggressive plan to spend more than $200 million to partially repair a fragmented public and private mental health system that some say lacks innovative policies and programs and consistent oversight and accountability.
S.C. is buying more than 200 flooded homes. A state-run program is in various stages of buying nearly 200 repeatedly flooded homes across six South Carolina communities. The effort comes in the wake of four hurricane-related disasters over four years.
Advocates celebrate S.C. law banning prosecution of trafficking victims. A wide-ranging public safety law that started out as a proposal to help victims of human trafficking was celebrated Thursday by advocates who had been working on its various sections for years. The law actually took effect July 2 with Gov. Henry McMaster’s signature. On Thursday, he ceremoniously signed it again.
SCDOR offers tax extensions due to Hurricane Debby. Several state tax returns and payments that would have been due between August 4, 2024 and Feb. 3, 2025 are all now due Feb. 3.
SCDOT asks for public input on the future of S.C. roads. The South Carolina Department of Transportation is asking the public to participate in a multimodal transportation survey before it closes on Sept. 6.
Authorities execute search warrant on state rep’s home. Federal agents on Monday executed a search warrant at the house belonging to State Rep. R.J. May III in Lexington County. Authorities would neither confirm nor deny they were investigating him. No charges have been filed.
State lawmaker says he was threatened with gun. S.C. Rep. J.A. Moore said he was threatened Tuesday with a gun during a parking dispute during which he was pulling into a parking spot to pick up his daughter in North Charleston.
State Supreme Court to hear Murdaugh’s jury tampering appeal. The S.C. Supreme Court says it will hear an appeal of two murder convictions of former lawyer Alex Murdaugh related to whether the jury was “tainted” by Colleton County’s clerk of court during the original trial.
Ban on paying workers less than minimum wage now in effect in S.C. Until only recently, some workers in South Carolina were being paid as little as five cents per hour — and it was legal.
A little A.I. might help
Nationally award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail always has an interesting take. This week, he takes a snarky aim about the state of South Carolina starting to use a little artificial intelligence.
What do you think … love it or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
S.C.’s Moore has juice with Kamala
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | This was going to be the column about how S.C. Rep. J.A. Moore may be the secret go-to guy for anyone who wants influence with Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
It still will be, but we’ve got to get the gun incident straightened out first.
On Aug. 13 an hour or so before he was to pick up his daughter from her first day of kindergarten, Moore waited to pull into a parking place so he could go to a restaurant near Park Circle in North Charleston. Then a guy in a black truck cut around him and took the space. Moore said he rolled down his window and exchanged words with the driver. Then he said the guy, sitting in his truck, pointed a gun at him. Moore drove off.
Not long later, Moore noticed the guy walking on the street, took a photo of him, returned to the lot and took a photo of his license plate, turning it over to police. Officers reportedly found the guy in a bar. He eventually admitted to the argument, but “denied brandishing a handgun toward the victim,” according to a police report. No arrest was made at the time due to lack of corroborating evidence or witnesses, but Moore later said he would press charges.
It was scary, Moore said Wednesday.
“It was a situation where the gentleman, for whatever reason, felt he needed to pull a gun to settle a verbal dispute,” said Moore, a Democrat elected to the legislature in 2022. “I don’t know if there’s a legislative remedy to that. But I do think there is a societal remedy that needs to be had.” The country, he says, needs a refreshed, new conversation about guns.
“He felt that it was OK to threaten my life over what was a verbal dispute. I never threatened the guy’s life.”
More than likely, this will be remembered as a life-changing moment for Moore. Just like that day in the spring of 2019 when he learned he was going to be the father of a girl.
At the time, Moore, like many state legislators, was being lobbied hard by presidential candidates for his political support in the important 2020 South Carolina Democratic presidential primary. He’d talked with several. Had their mobile numbers.
So it wasn’t out of the norm for him to know how to reach then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California. On the day after a gender reveal party, he phoned her to say he was going to be a little girl’s father and that he was going to support Harris’s candidacy.
“It was the fact that she was a woman of color who had a viable chance of being president and I wanted my daughter to see that image – to live in a country where that was possible,” Moore recalled this week. He wanted Harris to prove a Black woman could be president – for his daughter.
Moore eventually became a national surrogate, including a well-publicized stint in the spin room as after the S.C. primary debate in 2020. He co-chaired her S.C. campaign.
And they’ve stayed in touch, as he’s been invited to various Washington functions. He said he even showed up at the recent announcement that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would be Harris’s running mate.
These days, he’s still discouraged by gun violence across the country – from horrific mass shootings like the one in which his sister died in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston to the incident that affected him this month. But he says Harris’s candidacy is fresh and energizing.
“So many South Carolinians, both elected and people who believe in freedom and justice and that liberation takes work, are wholeheartedly supporting the vice president to be the next president. It’s encouraging to me.”
In the months ahead, Moore will be continuing a long fight to curb gun violence and to elect a friend to be the next president.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
The Felkel Group
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Which town?
So, some town seems to think it’s pretty friendly. Where is it? Any particular reason for it to be considered friendly? Send your name, hometown and guess to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Last week’s mystery, “Playing in the mud,” showed two boys playing in water puddles and mud at White Point Garden just after flooding inundated Charleston last week.
The photo was so recognizable that about two dozen people correctly identified it, including some newbies. Congrats to: Addison Ingle and Curtis Joyner, both of Charleston; Will Bradle of Las Vegas, Nevada; Nancy Barksdale of Columbia; Cassandra Fralix of Lexington; Bill Segars and Michael Webb, both of Hartsville; Ross Lenhart of Pawleys Island; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Elaine Huff-Lowe of Inman; Jay Altman, Elizabeth Jones and John Hart, all of Columbia; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; Steve Willis of Lancaster; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; Will Williams of Aiken; Barry Wingard of Florence; Jim Clifford of Hilton Head Island; Pat Keadle of Perry; Thomas Jacobsen of Sitka, Alaska; and Robyn Mixon.
- Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Good column on home hospice
To the editor:
I think you have definitely hit the nail on the head with your article on hospice.
My father at 99+ went out peacefully with hospice at 3:30 a.m. When hospice came in to check him, he woke up and joked with the nurses (he was always a light sleeper); shortly thereafter,he passed.
Fortunately, I have had the [hospice] experience with my father and have always believed that there is a big difference between living and existing. Hospice emphasizes the living while medical science tends to perpetuate the existing.
– Lee J. Wilwerding, Hilton Head Island, S.C.
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We encourage you to send in your thoughts about policy and politics impacting South Carolina. We’ve gotten some letters in the last few weeks – some positive, others nasty. We print non-defamatory comments, but unless you provide your contact information – name and hometown, plus a phone number used only by us for verification – we can’t publish your thoughts.
- Have a comment? Send your letters or comments to: feedback@statehousereport.com. Make sure to provide your contact details (name, hometown and phone number for verification. Letters are limited to 150 words.
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