SC lawmakers add LGBTQ protections to hate crime bill, send it to House floor
South Carolina lawmakers reversed course Tuesday, adding protections based on sexual orientation and gender back into a hate crimes bill after those protected classes were removed just one week ago.
While gender and sexual orientation were removed as an effort by Republicans to compromise and get the bill passed, the decision to add them back into the bill was unanimously approved by the House Judiciary Committee.
“I feel like it is important to remain consistent and include the language we had originally,” said S.C. Rep. Beth Bernstein, the sponsor of the amendment to add protections for the LGBTQ community back into the bill.
While Democrats won the battle over adding LGBTQ protections back into the bill, they had to compromise in another area. The committee voted to remove extra penalties for stalking, harassment and property damage out of the bill, limiting the crimes that could be considered hate crimes to only violent offenses.
The Judiciary Committee also voted to advance the bill to the House floor by a unanimous vote.
The bill, which has broad support from the business community, law enforcement and equality advocates, would specifically allow prosecutors to seek additional penalties for crimes committed on the basis of hate because of a person’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, national origin or physical or mental disability.
Currently, South Carolina does not have its own hate crimes law. If a crime is committed on the basis of hate, state prosecutors can only prosecute the crime itself. However, federal officials could choose to step in and charge the offender under the federal hate crimes law.
Last week, a panel of lawmakers voted unanimously to approve an amendment that stripped “sexual orientation” as a protected class out of the bill. The original version of the bill 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.
House Judiciary Chairman S.C. Rep. Chris Murphy, R-Dorchester, argued that protections for the LGBTQ community had to be removed in order to pass the hate crimes bill before the end of May, when lawmakers stop meeting for session in Columbia until the following January.
“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 last week. “We’re trying to mitigate that issue with the body as a whole. The goal is to keep the legislation moving down the track.”
Republicans on the panel argued, however, that a June 2020 Supreme Court decision that said that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on sex, also applies to members of the LGBTQ community and could be used to argue that sexual orientation could be included under the protected class of “sex” in the bill.
Supporters want to pass the bill by the end of the 2021 session because South Carolina is one of just three states in the nation without any hate crimes legislation on the books. In Arkansas, a hate crime bill is being considered in both the House and the Senate and in Wyoming, a bill was introduced in the House.
To get the bill passed, lawmakers also voted to add another compromise amendment, which would limit the crimes included in the bill to violent crimes, stripping out additional penalties for harassment, stalking or property damage.
Under the version of the bill passed Tuesday, for violent crimes like murder, assault, armed robbery or criminal sexual misconduct, the penalties could be increased by up to five years imprisonment and an additional fine up to $10,000.
The original bill said 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.
Democrats pushed back against the effort to remove those crimes from the bill.
Bernstein said the majority of hate crimes committed in the state would fall into the category of harassment, stalking or property damage. If those were removed from the bill, judges couldn’t add additional penalties to cases, for example, of people spray painting racial or ethnic slurs on an African Methodist Episcopal church or a synagogue.
“I’m afraid if we removed those offenses all together, we would remove most of the impact of having a hate crime bill out of the hate crime bill,” Bernstein said.
Democrats argued that the amendment would take a lot of the meat out of the bill.
“We need to get this bill with as much teeth to the floor as we can,” Rep. Cezar McKnight, D-Williamsburg, said.
Republicans stressed that the hate crime bill would not pass if the sections about harassment, stalking and property crimes were not taken out.
S.C. Rep. Weston Newton explained that members of the religious community worry that the bill could be used to persecute someone trying to proselytize or preach under the harassment section of the bill.
Religious leaders voiced that concern in subcommittee, but most of their worries were centered around a portion of the original bill that would have allowed someone to sue in civil court if they were the victim of a hate crime. That section of the bill was later stripped out.
“We can continue to have the discussion about malicious injury and stalking and harassment and see if we can find the common ground that makes folks comfortable that we’re not infringing on religious liberty,” Newton said.
