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A Preview of SC’s 2025 Legislative Session

Emily Havener

Since taking office, Donald Trump’s executive action stunts have fallen into roughly two categories: international relations, and states’ rights. (Immigration and deportation could be considered its own category, but for the sake of this article, I’m categorizing it into international relations.)

 

With his latest attempt to freeze funding that Congress has already approved for programs used by millions of taxpayers who provided the funds, Trump is following a playbook that has been the primary excuse of the new Republican for nearly a decade: states’ rights. But Trump isn’t taking power from the federal government and giving it to the states. He’s taking it from the people. He’s taking rights that belong to us—unenumerated ones, which the founders of America provided for in the Constitution by acknowledging that there are specific rights that must be inferred from existing laws and applied across multiple different scenarios.

 

The idea that education, health care access, and disaster relief should have little to no federal oversight or funding is obviously ridiculous. And we should do whatever we can, such as it is, to object.

 

However, if Trump is so determined to divide the US into 50 mini-countries, our focus this year, especially, must be our own state. I encourage each member of this party to choose and issue and/or a legislator and hold our state government strongly to account.

 

There are 153 prefiled Senate bills and even more House bills and it’s worth skimming to see what our legislators are up to in our name. However, in the interest of time, here’s a summary of what our state is up to legislatively:

 

Book bans

The SC State Board of Education’s Regulation 43-170 now solely defines “age appropriate” material to prohibit any description of “sexual conduct.”

  • The regulation takes the definition of “sexual conduct” in SC law out of context and does not acknowledge that the law only prohibits descriptions that are “patently offensive references, appealing to prurient interest, and  lacking literary, artistic, political or scientific value”—clearly intended to protect meritorious materials.

  • The regulation allows any parent or guardian to challenge a book in a way that it could be banned from every public school in the state—in the most recent case, a Beaufort parent who submitted a challenge to 97 books that has resulted in a year-long review.

  • So far this year, the Instructional Materials Review Committee has reviewed a challenge to six books and removed four of them statewide.

 

What you can do:

  1. Join the Freedom to Read coalition and follow on Facebook and Instagram for action items.

  2. Keep the contact information for the Instructional Materials Review Committee handy: Dr. Christian Hanley dr_hanley@yahoo.com Ms. Rita Allison rnrallison@charter.net

    Cheryl Collier cacollier@bellsouth.net Ms. Joyce Crimminger crimmingerj@gmail.com Ms. Tammie Shore tshore@saludaschools.org

  

Abortion death penalty

Senators Harris, Magnuson, Chumley, Burns, Long and Kilmartin have reintroduced a bill (H. 3537) making abortion a crime punishable by the death penalty.

 

What you can do:

  1. Write to the House Judiciary Committee urging them to dismiss this outrageous bill. This is what stopped a similar bill in Louisiana.

  2. RSVP for the Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic webinar on Monday, February 3 from 7 to 7:45 pm

 

 

Write to Senator Sean Bennett

Bennett sent out a newsletter entitled “A Time for Seriousness” on January 12, in which he lists his legislative priorities (e.g., strengthening the education system, pursuing tort reform, addressing housing affordability, reforming tax policy, etc.) and says that he’s “optimistic that my colleagues and I can focus on these serious issues rather than becoming mired in the performative politics that too often distract from meaningful progress.”

 

What you can do: Let Bennett know that his optimism is disingenuous, and that if he does not stand up to the “performative” politics that are endangering our minds and bodies, he is just as guilty and extreme as the legislators championing our bills. Also let him know that you support the prefiled bills below.

 

Good bills we should urge our lawmakers to show support for

  • S. 3  to amend the law that prohibits a person convicted of a felony from voting and reinstate those rights (Senator Jackson)

  • S. 7  to enact the “Red Flags Act” that would allow law enforcement to remove firearms from imminent risk persons (Senator Jackson)

  • S. 14 to exempt baby food and baby formula from sales tax (Senators Hutto, Reichenbach and Zell)

  • S. 18 to create the offense of criminally negligent storage of a firearm (Senator Hutto)

  • S. 25 to raise the legal marriageable age to 18 (Senator Hutto)

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