A look at the 2024 legislative session and what’s still left to do

The South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., on Thursday, March 21, 2024. (File/Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — The 2024 legislative session was marked by Republicans fighting each other as they pushed legislation on guns and transgender youth across the finish line, but bills on college hiring, insurance rates, and teacher contracts fell short.

However, while last week’s chaotic close to the regular session put legislation in the trash heap, compromises on some bills are still possible in extended sessions that start next month.

And much work remains on the state budget that takes effect July 1. Key differences the chambers must sort out include how much is spent on road and bridge work, and whether a surplus in sales tax collections goes toward a one-time property tax credit or lowering income taxes.

What’s left to do?

Efforts that stay alive for potential compromises include changes to the Legislature’s judicial selection process.

Prosecutors across the state, including Attorney General Alan Wilson, have called for reform, saying the system gives legislators too much power over the judicial branch.

Bills signed into law Monday by Gov. Henry McMaster include those that:

• Define antisemitism

• Allow landowners to kill feral hogs by helicopter

• Exempt feminine hygiene products from sales taxes

• Prevent the state from adding admission taxes to golf course membership dues

• Require school districts to adopt an epilepsy training program on recognizing the signs and symptoms of seizures

• Prohibit life insurance policies from declining or limiting coverage to living organ donors

Source: McMaster’s office

Both chambers passed their own version of how to tweak the system, to include giving the governor appointments on the judicial screening panel and forwarding more qualified candidates to a joint General Assembly for election. Neither chamber had any interest in a complete overhaul.

Whether the magistrate system controlled by senators sees any change may be the biggest sticking point. The House bill lessened senators’ control. The Senate version didn’t touch that.

Still, Wilson was hopeful that something will reach the governor’s desk next month.

“Our judicial selection process desperately needs reform, and we’re almost there,” he said in a statement after the chambers agreed in the regular session’s waning hours to send their differing versions to a negotiating committee. “This bill is not perfect, but it is progress.”

As a six-member panel hashes out any changes to how legislators pick judges in the future, the entire Legislature will vote on the next state Supreme Court justice.

Legislators will choose between three candidates selected Thursday by the screening panel. Their decision will determine whether South Carolina has the nation’s only all-male, all-white state Supreme Court, or whether the seat’s filled by the state’s third-ever female justice or first Black female justice.

Work will also continue on a massive energy bill that became a lightning rod of controversy from consumer advocates and conservation groups. But that issue won’t be resolved next month.

Senators refused to agree to the bill as pushed by House Speaker Murrell Smith, but they could reach consensus later this year on a new version to replace it.

How to handle data centers — energy hogs that have become a focal point of the debate over the need for more electricity — could be decided in a separate bill sent to a negotiating committee.

Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday he will sign whatever compromises legislators reach on the judicial reform and energy bills.

“This is something that we cannot put off,” he said about electricity needs.

Also still in negotiations is a bill unresolved from last year that’s supposed to clear up existing law prohibiting racist lessons in South Carolina classrooms. But even the House’s chief sponsor objected to changes made during floor debate in that chamber.

Before passing its version a year ago, the Senate removed sections seen as stifling instruction and allowing for a litany of lawsuits. A House-Senate panel met last week but language on a potential compromise is still in the works.

Because this is an election year, resulting in a new Legislature in January, all bills that don’t become law by session’s end die and must be reintroduced next year for the process to start all over. The extended sessions are limited primarily to negotiations on the budget and bills sent to a negotiating committee after separate versions passed both chambers.

What’s dead?

A bill merging six agencies and touted as removing bureaucratic inefficiencies in South Carolina’s fragmented public health system officially died as the clock ran out Thursday. But there could be a vote next month to allow that to be added to the extra-session agenda.

Both chambers passed separate versions of the bill, but the House Freedom Caucus blocked a vote that could have sent them to a negotiating committee.

On Monday, McMaster urged legislators to resurrect the bill, which will require two-thirds approval by each chamber to amend the temporary law governing the extended sessions.

“We have way too many things happening to our people that could be prevented if we could get organized and streamlined,” the governor said. “I believe that enacting that reorganization of our health care institutions is the best answer that we have so far.”

Legislation that truly died — again — with no chance of being taken up again this year included yearslong efforts to legalize medical marijuana, allow betting on horse races through online apps, and allow curbside and home delivery of alcohol.

It was the second time in three years that a bill legalizing cannabis for certain illnesses passed the Senate but died in the House. This time, it never reached the House floor.

Smith said it didn’t have the support to pass in that chamber.

“What I’ve told the advocates is, we need to reach some accord with law enforcement and not try to shove it down their throats because they’re on the front line of this issue and they deserve the respect, at least, for us to slow it down and make sure they’re safe and they’re OK with it,” the Sumter Republican told reporters after session ended.

Bills that passed the House but died in the Senate would have barred colleges from using diversity statements in hiring and admission, required age verification to access social media, greatly expanded South Carolina’s one-year-old private school choice law, and allowed campaign donations to pay for childcare expenses.

Also dying in the Senate was an effort to reduce insurance rates for restaurants that serve alcohol, despite having the backing of Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who told reporters Thursday he hopes to get that done next year.

Since 2017, businesses that serve alcohol past 5 p.m. have been required to carry a minimum $1 million in liability insurance. The rising cost and shrinking availability of this insurance — known as liquor liability insurance — has hit establishments of all sizes, even causing some to close.

A potential fix proved elusive, as opponents argued against any change that would make it harder to sue bars that continue serving drunk patrons who go on to injure or kill someone.

The House and Senate came up with different strategies. The House version passed that chamber 106-2 while the version that advanced in the Senate never got a floor vote.

What passed?

House Republicans gave final approval Thursday to the bill they called their top priority for the session.

The legislation bans transition-related hormone treatments and puberty blockers for transgender youth under 18. It criminalizes transition surgeries on minors, though both sides agreed that’s not happening anyway in South Carolina. It additionally bars Medicaid government insurance from paying for transition-related surgeries and hormones for transgender South Carolinians of any age.

Gov. Henry McMaster has said he will sign it. A lawsuit could follow.

A bill allowing adults to legally carry a handgun in South Carolina without a permit was among the few pieces of legislation to become law early in the year.

Legislation sent to the governor’s desk in a flurry of activity in the final days include bills that:

• Require age verification to access online porn

•  Designate Fort Eisenhower in Augusta, Georgia, as a South Carolina military installation for state grant purposes

• Allow colleges to represent student athletes in personal branding and sponsorship deals

• Increase tax breaks for companies with apprenticeship programs for high schoolers and adults

• Criminalize the misuse of the animal tranquilizer xylazine

• Call for a memorial to Robert Smalls on Statehouse grounds

While the chambers approved final versions of those bills, the clock for McMaster hasn’t officially started.

The bills must be signed by the House speaker and Senate president before they actually go to his desk, and no signing ceremony was held after the session closed Thursday. Whenever those two get together and sign bills, McMaster will have five days — excluding Sunday — to sign legislation, veto it or let it become law without his signature.

Reporters Abraham Kenmore and Skylar Laird contributed to this report.

Editor’s Note: The article has been changed to reflect the correct day of McMaster’s news conference and bill signings (Monday).

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