Beaufort County hate crime bill is dead. Here’s how council members voted
.png "Beaufort County Council members discuss a hate crime ordinance Monday.")
The Beaufort County Council has shot down a local effort to create a “hate intimidation” offense that would have been a misdemeanor crime.
But the county is still on record as supporting a statewide hate crime bill that has yet to pass.
On a 6-4 vote, the Beaufort County Council, meeting in Bluffton, killed the local ordinance in its second reading Monday. Members cited legal and other concerns before the vote.
Voting against it were: Logan Cunningham, Anna Maria Tabernik, David Bartholomew, Paula Brown, Mark Lawson and Tom Reitz.
Voting for it were: Alice Howard, Joe Passiment, York Glover and Gerald Dawson.
Hate crime definition
The ordinance defined a hate crime as causing “the fear of, harm, injury, or damage to the victim’s person or property because of the victim’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or physical or mental disability, whether or not the perception is correct.”
The penalty for conviction would have been a $500 fine and or up to 30 days in jail.
The council was divided.
How did we get here?
Councilman Logan Cunningham pressed county staff on who directed them to craft the hate crime ordinance and put it before the County Council for a vote.
Councilman Larry McElynn, who was not at Monday’s meeting, brought it forward to the Community Services and Public Safety Committee, Cunningham was told.
Members of that committee previously voted unanimously to forward the hate intimidation ordinance to the full County Council.
Cunningham described the proposed ordinance as a “slippery slope” that could lead to people making questionable or unprovable allegations of hate crimes based on race, sex and other reasons. “This opens up a door for a lot of angles,” he said.
Religious concerns raised
Lawson said he worried about the free speech of residents with Biblical views being restricted if they expressed religious views on issues such as same-sex marriage.
Bartholomew said he wasn’t opposed to the ordinance because the cause is unworthy. Rather, he said, he predicted the ordinance would be immediately challenged in court. He cited an opinion from the State Attorney General’s Office that raised legal questions about municipal hate crime ordinances.
The legal issues
That opinion says: “In our opinion criminal hate crimes ordinances have been rendered ‘off limits” by our state Constitution and this form of criminal behavior may be addressed only by the General Assembly. Our Supreme Court has made it clear that local governments may not make criminal what remains ‘legal’ under statewide criminal law.”
South Carolina remains one of two states without a statewide hate crimes law.
The appropriate action for Beaufort County, Bartholomew said, is to press the state to pass a statewide hate crimes law.
The County Council’s Community Services and Public Safety Committee approved a resolution April 6 urging the General Assembly to pass a comprehensive statewide hate crime bill.
Local ordinances may also run afoul with free speech guarantees in the First Amendment, the attorney general’s opinion says.
Brian Hulbert, the county’s legal counsel, cautioned the council about adopting an ordinance in light of the Attorney General’s Office’s opinion. He also said a misdemeanor charge and a 30-days-in-jail penalty does not go far enough.
“It’s just ridiculous to trivialize a hate crime to that level to being a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony,” Hulbert said. “It should be a felony and add 10 years, in the appropriate case, is what most prosecutors would tell you.”
Support for hate crime ordinance
The City of Beaufort and the Town of Bluffton, however, have passed their own hate crime ordinances,
Dawson said the county should not be discouraged from moving ahead because of the possibility the ordinance might be overturned. The hate crime ordinance, he said, was needed. Hate should not be shown toward anybody, regardless of their race, color or creed, he added.
Earlier this month, Sreden Prince of the Lowcountry Coalition Against Hate told the council that justice should not be determined by a map.
“An act of hate or intimidation in Beaufort or Bluffton leads to charges, whereas that same act just a few miles away in an unincorporated area and Hilton Head leads to silence,” she said. “Justice should not depend on a zip code.”
