Protections for SC’s LGBTQ community stripped out of House hate crimes bill
A panel of South Carolina lawmakers stripped explicit protections for members of the LGBTQ community out of a hate crimes bill which was advanced by members of the House Thursday.
If the bill passes, the only protected characteristics named in the bill would be actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, national origin and physical or mental disability. The original version of the bill also made sexual orientation, gender, age and ancestry protected classes. “Gender identity” was never included as a protected class in the bill, despite pleas from LGBTQ advocates and allies.
On Thursday, lawmakers removed the specific reference to “sexual orientation” as a protected class from the bill. House Judiciary Chairman S.C. Rep. Chris Murphy, R-Dorchester, said the panel stripped that language out of the bill for it to be able to pass the House this year, Murphy said.
“If it was in that bill to say ‘sexual orientation,’ we have an issue in the body as a whole,” Murphy said in an interview with The State. “We’re trying to mitigate that issue with the body as a whole. The goal is to keep the legislation moving down the track.”
The Anti Defamation League blasted the decision to remove “sexual orientation” from the list of protected classes, saying they were “appalled,” in a statement.
“Hate crimes targeting South Carolinians because of their sexual orientation or gender would be invisible under State law,” the statement read. “Enactment of this amended version of HB 3620 not only would jeopardize the safety of some of the State’s most vulnerable populations, but it would severely damage South Carolina’s reputation as a welcoming state. It would send the unmistakable discriminatory message that only some South Carolinians are deserving of hate crime protections.”
Lawmakers are pressed for time to pass bills by May, when the entire House and Senate will stop meeting until next January. Legislators are determined to pass a hate crime bill by the end of this year.
The House will have an open week next week to take up and pass bills on the floor, but the following week, it will be consumed by debate over the state budget. Then, House members will leave Columbia for a week for furlough, and when they return, they will only have three remaining days to pass bills before the so-called crossover deadline, when the House and Senate stop receiving new bills from the other chamber unless the receiving chamber overwhelmingly agrees to take up a proposal.
Currently, South Carolina has no available enhancements for hate crimes on the state level. If the bill passes, South Carolina will no longer be one of just three states without a hate crimes statute on the books.
Democratic House members on the panel expressed concern about stripping explicit protections for members of the LGBTQ community.
“I do believe that we’re falling short from going as far as we should,” S.C. Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, said.
“I don’t know that the class change covers what is and has been a problem, which is discrimination and hate crimes toward the homosexual community,” Bamberg said.
Bamberg told his fellow lawmakers that it wasn’t legislators’ place to approve or disapprove of how people live their lives.
He added that he wasn’t sure that members of the LGBTQ community would be protected under the “sex” protected class, including transgender or nonbinary people or others whose outward appearance does not conform with binary — male and female — definitions of gender.
A proponent for cutting down on the number of named protected classes, Rep. Weston Newton, R-Beaufort, said a recent Supreme Court case extended protections based on sex to the LGBTQ community.
In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on sex, also applies to members of the LGBTQ community.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Trump appointed judge Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.
Newton argued that the Supreme Court already protects the LGBTQ community, and adding specific protections for that group could keep the bill from passing in time.
“If that law exists and that body of case law is there, getting too hung up on the specific wording … this thing may get derailed and crossover may get beyond something that we are capable of attaining and achieving,” Newton said.
Changing the classes that are protected in the hate crime bill were part of a larger amendment introduced by Murphy, which ultimately passed the committee unanimously.
Another part of the amendment changed the wording of the penalties, so instead of requiring a certain sentence for a hate crime, it gives judges a little more flexibility, allowing them to give a penalty up to a certain threshold.
For violent crimes, the penalties could be increased by up to five years imprisonment and an additional fine up to $10,000. For stalking or imprisonment, the penalties could be increased to up to a $5,000 fine and three years imprisonment and, for malicious injury offenses, a fine up to $1,000 and an additional one year imprisonment.
The amendment also stripped out a civil component originally included in the law, which would have allowed victims of property damage or those suffering personal injury because of a hate crime to sue for damages. The court could award the victim up to $25,000 for each violation.
That section of the original bill was opposed by some members of the religious community, who worried it would be used to target religious speech on the basis of harassment. They argued that the civil aspect of the bill could be used against religious groups who are preaching or reading a part of the Bible that may offend someone.
“I think this amendment will go a long way to alleviating the concerns of the membership,” Murphy said.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to advance the bill to the full Judiciary Committee, which will meet early next week to discuss the bill.
The bill was advanced just days after law enforcement, business leaders and minority group advocates testified about the potential good the bill could do for more than an hour Tuesday, where advocates argued it would help deter hate crimes from happening within the state and business leaders argued it would send a message on South Carolina’s values to prospective businesses and employees.
