SC attorney general could back Lexington County in development legal fight
South Carolina’s attorney general offered to support Lexington County’s concurrency standards in a lawsuit if the county is sued by developers.
The county got a thumbs up from the state’s top legal office when County Councilwoman Beth Carrigg asked for an opinion ahead of a vote last month by council members to include school data as part of their concurrency review.
“Folks, I spoke briefly with Alan this morning concerning our conference call the other day,” Solicitor General Emeritus Robert Cook wrote Carrigg and attorney Eric Bland in a Dec. 30 email, referring to S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson. “He is certainly open to our submitting an amicus brief should the need arise.”
An amicus curiae – Latin for “friend of the court” – is a brief a third party can file with a court to offer an expert opinion or insight into the issues at stake in a legal case, meaning the attorney general’s office could weigh in on the legality of the standards adopted by Lexington County in the event of a lawsuit.
“Meanwhile I am doing further research on the constitutionality of concurrency ordinances,” Cook continued in the email. “I am finding that the courts generally uphold them as rational, provided they are not adopted for the purpose of keeping people out, but to further health and safety.
“I would think that protecting the safety of schools certainly meets that test, as does ensuring sufficient infrastructure to handle the health and safety of the community.
“I will keep you posted. Hope you had [sic] Merry Christmas. Bob,” the former solicitor general signed off the email.
Lexington County is the first in South Carolina to adopt standards that allow for concurrent review of new housing developments by the public agencies that would provide services to potentially hundreds of new residents in a major subdivision. That included the needs of school districts that would have to accommodate any new students moving into the area.
But county council members were reticent to make their approval of new housing dependent on the decisions of school districts which, unlike other local agencies, are not under the control of the county. In October, council members voted to drop a formal questionnaire they had sent to school districts about proposed development, even as at least one school board indicated they wanted the county to take their needs into consideration.
Carrigg wrote to the attorney general’s office in November after her council colleagues dropped school concurrency, looking for legal support for the practice.
“This decision has been a source of significant concern, as school overcrowding remains a serious issue in light of the rapid pace of residential development within Lexington County,” Carrigg wrote. “The Council’s decision was influenced, in part, by concerns that the inclusion of school concurrency could expose the County to potential litigation that it might not be able to successfully defend. County Council may reconsider the issue of school concurrency should [the attorney general’s] opinion determine that such provisions are supported by South Carolina law.”
After council voted to use publicly available school capacity data to make future development decisions, Carrigg followed up with a “thank you” letter to Cook Feb. 3 that addressed criticism of the latest decision.
“Clearly it was an unintentional characterization of the type of opinion I received when addressing Council on restoring schools to our concurrency ordinance,” Carrigg wrote. “I was certainly not implying that the Attorney General supports concurrency as a whole or that I was provided an ‘official published AG opinion.’
“I simply meant that I had received legal guidance from the Office of the Attorney General in response to my request; and I did,” she said. “It is unfortunate that those against concurrency have taken this opportunity to publicly turn this into a fabricated legal quagmire.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 1:32 PM.
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