SC Judge says FOIA doesn’t apply, nixes effort to void redistricting bill over rules

South Carolina Circuit Judge Daniel Coble early Wednesday afternoon nixed a bid by activist groups to void a historic Congressional redistricting bill passed this week by the state House Republican majority, saying the state’s open meetings law didn’t apply in this case.

In his one-page ruling, which came just hours after oral arguments before him at the Richland County courthouse Wednesday morning Coble ruled that the issue before him was “a purely political question” over which he had no authority, and any “judicial intervention would violate well-established separation of powers principles.”

In any event, Coble’s ruling said, state Freedom of Information Act provisions which plaintiffs in the case had accused S.C. House members of violating did not apply in the present case.

Coble’s ruling only pertained to a procedural issue targeting the speedy manner in which the House Rules Committee earlier this week went about changing rules to sharply limit debate by lawmakers on a bill that created seven new Congressional districts across South Carolina. The new districts favor Republicans and, depending on what voters do in November, could eliminate the current 6th District member of Congress, Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democrat and the only African American in the current delegation.

The ruling does not affect any future legal challenges to the new districts themselves.

Plaintiff attorney Kathleen McDaniel, representing the South Carolina branches of the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters, told Coble in the Wednesday hearing that the Rules Committee violated the S.C. Freedom of Information Act by scheduling a meeting Monday night to limit debate with little notice.

The FOIA requires a 24-hour notice for public meetings, unless there is an emergency and House Speaker Murrell Smith didn’t cite any emergency, she contended.

Michael Parente, a lawyer for Smith, the House Rules Committee and its chairman, Rep. Micah Caskey, R-Lexington, opposed McDaniel, arguing that the issue before Coble was a “very simple issue of the separation of powers.”

The ACLU and the League are asking for the judge to “second guess the judgment of the Legislature in setting its own procedural rules” and the state Supreme Court has made it clear that the Legislature is free to set its own rules and govern its own procedures, said Parente, accompanied by attorney Ben Garner.

Moreover, House Speaker Smith has the complete authority to waive the 24-hour public notification and is not required to make public his reasons for waiving the 24-hour requirement, Parente said.

“It is his sole discretion,” Parente said.

In court filings, McDaniel had alleged the S.C. House Rules Committee violated the S.C. Freedom of Information Act by calling a meeting of the Rules Committee Monday evening with only eight minutes’ warning to the public and other lawmakers.

At that meeting, Republican Rules Committee members voted to sharply limit debate on a Congressional redistricting bill before the House, a resolution that allowed the House to pass its redistricting bill early Wednesday morning. Republicans contended the new rules actually expanded debate opportunities.

At the time of the Rules meeting, the House was facing days of debate over more than 600 amendments that had been introduced. Once the Rules committee limited the number of amendments to only one amendment per lawmaker (there are 124 lawmakers in the House) and a 3-minute time limit on each, the House was able to move quickly, passing a redistricting bill after midnight in the early morning hours of Wednesday.

McDaniel and her colleagues, attorneys Lydia Hendrix and Jace Woodrum, argued that by allegedly violating the FOI Act’s meeting requirement with no emergency present, the House was putting itself above the law.

“We are asking the House to comply with the law that everybody else in ... this state has to comply with,” McDaniel told Coble, urging him to declare the House Rules action limiting debate “null and void.”

McDaniel said in an email after his ruling, ‘’We are certainly disappointed in Judge Coble’s ruling, particularly as it seems to undercut the importance of the Freedom of Information Act.” She indicated more legal challenges may follow.

The 74-37 vote on the House’s final 110-page redistricting bill came just after midnight Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the House bill has gone to the S.C. Senate, where Wednesday afternoon it was being discussed in that chamber’s Judiciary Committee.

Caskey, a defendant in Wednesday’s legal action, said, “Redistricting is a serious issue and these activist groups should be ashamed of themselves for playing politics in our court system. I’m glad Judge Coble dismissed this baseless and frivilous lawsuit so the focus can return to the actual policy issues before us.”

Trump’s involvement, race dimensions

Coble’s decision favoring House Republican leaders was a small but important part of an unprecedented historic effort on the national scene this spring.

President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t want the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives to have a Democratic majority after the November midterms. To avoid that scenario, he is trying to get state legislatures around the country to draw new Congressional districts that tilt Republican in hopes of eliminating as many Democratic Congressional members as possible.

Ordinarily, redistricting takes place every 10 years.

If successful in South Carolina, Trump’s effort would possibly eliminate Clyburn, a situation which would likely ensure a seven-member U.S. House delegation of white Republicans.

South Carolina Republicans insist that only political party, not race, is the determining factor in their redistricting calculus, arguments they also made in defending the current districts.

In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a key South Carolina’s Congressional district was drawn up for partisan, not racial, reasons.

But as a practical matter, the racial aspect of redistricting efforts is hard for many to ignore, especially in a state with a legacy of hundreds of years of slavery followed by nearly a century of segregation, an unlawful practice that was in effect into the 1960s, during the lifetimes of older South Carolina residents.

Coble and South Carolina judges

Cases involving the Legislature’s authority are thorny issues for state judges and justices. The state’s 170 lawmakers elect judges and justices.

In a recent case involving making public details of how payments of millions of dollars were divided among University of South Carolina college athletes, lawmakers and the university asked Coble to defer ruling until lawmakers had passed a law keeping secret details of such payments.

Coble agreed to delay his opinion in what could have been a ruling that revealed details of where $20.5 million the University of South Carolina was spending on athletes was going.

“When, and if, the General Assembly speaks, this Court must listen. This Court will not rush into a decision which could have impacts statewide and nationwide,” Coble wrote in a Jan. 16 order.

In another decision, Coble last year turned down a resident’s bid to prevent the State Election Commission from turning over voter privacy data, apparently including driver’s license numbers and telephone numbers, to U.S. Department of Justice. The Commission has since fashioned an agreement that it says safeguards personally identifiable information.

In another matter showing the power of the Legislature over the judicial branch, House Speaker Smith last year decided to back a political ally, former House Speaker Jay Lucas, who had scant judicial experience, for the State Supreme Court.

With the help of Smith and other top lawmakers, Lucas gathered enough pledges of lawmakers for Lucas to get a seat on the Supreme Court by replacing sitting Associate Justice John Cannon Few, whose 10-year term was expiring. Few had angered some lawmakers with his joining decisions on abortion and striking down a bill that increased lawmakers’ compensation.

Few, widely regarded as an excellent justice with 26 years on the bench, dropped out of the race, but did so in a way — thanks to technicalities in judicial elections — that made it impossible for Lucas to get the seat. Few is retiring at the end of July when his term expires. His place will be taken by substitute judges until the next Supreme Court election next March.

Jay Bender, a veteran FOIA attorney who has represented many media groups including The State, said Wednesday that issues like the FOIA one before Coble “put judges who may be running for re-election in a very difficult spot.”

It might be best that when cases involving the General Assembly come up for the Supreme Court to appoint a retired judge who doesn’t have to worry about currying favor with lawmakers, Bender said.

“It would be advisable to have a case assigned to a judge who is retired and not running for re-election in the future,” Bender said.

Coble, 39, occupies a judicial term that expires in 2030. He is highly regarded and was selected Wednesday to fill in for departing associate justice Few to hear a Supreme Court case.