The 2024 session of the South Carolina General Assembly may be remembered for what didn’t happen

COLUMBIA (AP) — The 2024 regular session of the South Carolina General Assembly ends Thursday and may be better remembered for the things that didn’t work out.
South Carolina, along with Wyoming, remains one of only two states without a hate crimes law. A proposal allowing medical marijuana passed the Senate again, but died in the Statehouse lobby in the House of Representatives. Liquor stores won’t be open on Sundays anytime soon, and a bill to widely expand private school vouchers was pushed hard by House leaders but went nowhere in the Senate.
A number of new laws were passed, large and small. Anyone who can legally own a gun can now carry a gun openly. Bills that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors, eliminate the sales tax on feminine hygiene products and revise the state’s law on compensating college athletes are awaiting the governor’s signature.
And bills that would change the commission that screens judges, consolidate several separate health agencies and change the state’s energy policy are heading to conference committees of three senators and three members of the House of Representatives to see if the differences between the chambers can be resolved dissolved.
But ultimately, it was the things left undone that highlighted the end of this two-year term.

Any bills that do not pass both chambers expire on Thursday and must be reintroduced in the next session in January. All 170 members of the General Assembly are up for election, so bills could face a very different legislative environment in 2025.
HATE crimes
For the second straight session, the generally more conservative South Carolina House passed a bill that would allow stiffer penalties for crimes that prosecutors could prove were related to race, gender or sexual orientation.
And that bill died again in the Senate, without a basic vote.
Supporters of the bill believe it would pass the Senate if it came to a vote. But some of the House’s most conservative senators have kept the bill on the Senate calendar. They have said little publicly, but suggest that many crimes are caused by hate and that it is dangerous to guess someone’s thoughts.
The bill’s proponents have worked hard. In 2022, they enlisted major corporations to push for the law so that South Carolina didn’t become an outlier compared to Wyoming. Last year, they released two of the three survivors of the Charleston church massacre that killed nine Black worshipers in 2015.
They promise to return in 2025, but they could face a more conservative House and Senate.
MEDICAL MARIHUANA

On the other side of the Statehouse, the Senate for its second session passed a bill allowing medical marijuana that died in the House of Representatives.
This year the bill never came out of a House committee. In 2023, the leadership of the House of Representatives stopped this on technical grounds, saying that it raised revenue and that these types of bills should start in the House of Representatives.
Republican Senator Tom Davis has been relentlessly pushing for the bill for almost a decade. He has promised time and time again that he has no intention of allowing recreational marijuana use. Smoking the drug for medical use would be illegal and the marijuana would only be available through specially selected pharmacies.
He said he will return if re-elected and will lobby every House member himself if necessary.
“It’s hard to rewire a lot of people who are conditioned to think of marijuana a certain way and that factory session or hardwiring is especially pronounced in South Carolina,” Davis said.
TRAINING BONUS
Before a pilot program allowing parents to spend taxpayer dollars on private and home schooling even started, or before the Supreme Court decided whether it was legal, the House began pushing to open it to all parents.
The Senate never took up the bill after the House passed it.

The trust fund program for education grants was signed into law last year with a cap of $6,000 for 5,000 students. The money can go toward tuition, transportation, supplies or technology at private schools or public schools outside a student’s district. Over three years, the current program will expand to a family income cap of $120,000 and a cap of 15,000 students.
The House bill would open the program to all students and increase the amount given to parents along with spending per public school student.
SUNDAY LIQUEUR SALE
A bill that would allow liquor stores to remain open for a few hours on Sundays, if the local government allows it, also died quietly.
The proposal was adopted by the House of Representatives, but was not heard in the Senate.
Advocates said it is time to update outdated, age-old rules based on religion that designated Sunday as a day of rest. They said it would help businesses — especially those frequented by tourists who spend more than $20 billion annually in South Carolina and who are sometimes surprised to find they can’t get a bottle of tequila or rum on a summer beach day.
Opponents say small liquor stores will feel forced to work another day because company stores will be open.