Pressure mounts to undo school mask mandate bans, but SC lawmakers haven’t moved
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and the General Assembly’s Republican leaders are facing increasing pressure to repeal — or at best modify — a state measure that is being interpreted to bar school districts from requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks.
This week, state lawmakers intensified their calls, demanding a return to Columbia for a special legislative session to reconsider a provision included in the state budget that aims to prevent schools from implementing mask mandates or risk losing state dollars.
The state’s largest teachers group — Palmetto State Teachers Association — and the state’s school boards association also weighed in. And, Tuesday, South Carolina’s schools chief took those calls one step further, holding a press conference with pediatricians and the state’s lead epidemiologist to lean on the Legislature to allow school boards to make their own mask decisions.
“We have two ways, now, to make that happen. Either the Legislature comes back in — and I have asked them to do that, continually — or this ends up in the courts and the courts resolve it,” said Education Secretary Molly Spearman. “I disagree with the governor on this. We have got to have a solution to this. Our schools are starting. Our educators are worried and we have parents who are very, very concerned.”
No stakeholders have weighed in more aggressively on the issue than the local district and government leaders, who over the past month and the last 48 hours have defied the Legislature by enforcing mask wearing in schools despite the one-year budget measure, known as a proviso, and the governor’s opposition.
So far, McMaster and the two top GOP state lawmakers — Senate President Harvey Peeler, of Cherokee County, and House Speaker Jay Lucas, of Darlington County — who hold the power to call their respective chambers back to work haven’t moved.
House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-York, told The State Tuesday that lawmakers have yet to reach a consensus on whether to hold a special session to address two mask budget measures — one that seeks to ban mask mandates in schools and the other on college campuses.
Late Tuesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of a University of South Carolina professor and state senator, who argued college campuses should be allowed to require masks indoors.
“We said all along the proviso was inartfully drafted,” Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement after the ruling. “While we disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling, we certainly understand its rationale and anticipated this was a reading the Court could give.”
Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office has yet to take legal action after the Columbia City Council enacted the requirement in schools.
A spokesman for Wilson said they had no specific timetable to respond to the city’s action.
“We’re still deciding on the appropriate response,” he said.
Neither Lucas nor Peeler immediately responded to inquiries.
But McMaster, who has strongly stated support for the budget measure, told reporters Tuesday he doesn’t think the Legislature needs to return.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “I think if we do the things that we know work, and the thing that works the best, you know, is the vaccine. And anyone who wants to wear a mask is free to wear a mask. Parents are the best experts on their own children.”
‘The budget should be about budget’
In between House and Senate chambers Tuesday, Democratic state lawmakers urged leaders to call them back to work, a day after two Senate Republicans joined two Democrats in a letter asking to return.
“We must do the right thing. Getting kids back in the classroom should ... never be based on politics. Instead, our politics should be based on public health,” said state Rep. Patricia Henegan, D-Malboro, chairwoman of the Legislative Black Caucus. “It appears we are playing politics with science.”
The mask measures, introduced by Rep. Stewart Jones, R-Laurens, passed largely along party lines and with little controversy in early June, when the pandemic appeared to be winding down.
But with coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths surging over the past two months due to the emergence of the highly contagious delta variant, the ban on school mask mandates has become a political flashpoint.
Despite the formal legislative calendar ending in mid-May, lawmakers passed a joint resolution allowing them to return to address specific issues. Lawmakers are already scheduled to return to Columbia this fall, when they’ll deal with how to spend federal COVID-19 relief money and handle redistricting.
They also can tackle the budget measure if they so choose, but it would require a heavy lift.
Changing what’s called the sine die resolution to take up the mask measure would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber to agree, Simrill said, while sending a message to colleagues.
“It is difficult to put permanent law into provisos,” Simrill said. “The sequencing of a budget is to get the majority to vote. We’re also in a different place today than we were in May and June with the delta variant or the outbreak. The budget should be about budget. Policy has crept in more and more. When it comes to budgetary matters, that should be left to legislation and laws. But the fact of the matter is that’s where we are.”
COVID-19 transmission in schools was minimal last year, but changes in school mask policies, the return of full in-person learning, and the evolution of the virus is likely to lead to increased spread this fall, state health experts warned. With the rise of the delta variant, more young people are getting sick and staying sicker for longer, health experts say.
Masking is a crucial COVID-19 mitigation tool for schools because children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination, and only about 30% of those 12 to 19 have gotten coronavirus shots.
As of Monday, before many schools had even resumed classes, nearly 300 students and school employees had tested positive for COVID-19, state health officials said.
Kershaw County schools currently have more than 900 students, or about 8% of its student body, in quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure and Pickens County schools have gone all virtual after 162 students tested positive for the virus.
“I’m greatly concerned that this school year could be a perfect storm for disease spread if we have unvaccinated and unmasked students and teachers together,” State Epidemiologist Linda Bell said last week, shortly after health officials announced that more than 10,000 South Carolinians had died of COVID-19.
Reporters Lucas Daprile and John Monk contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
