COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – A group of South Carolina lawmakers added protection for gay or transgender people to a hate crime bill, five days after removing them.
But they voted to remove harassment and harassment from crimes that could add an extra penalty for hate crimes, leaving the proposal only to deal with violent crimes.
The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee 23-0 on Tuesday and is now on the House floor.
Congressman Wendell Gilliard, Democrat from Charleston, has been pushing for a state hate crime bill since nine black church members were killed in a racist attack on a Charleston church in 2015. He said removing the nonviolent crimes from the proposal is worrying.
But he agreed with Republican leaders that the key was to get the bill to the House floor and approved before the April 10 deadline, after which the proposal would be almost impossible to pass.
“We moved back once. We can keep fighting as long as he is alive, ”said Gilliard.
LGBTQ groups were shocked on Thursday when sexual orientation and gender were removed other factors such as race, religion or disability to determine whether a hate crime has been committed. There was little discussion when these factors were added again.
South Carolina, Arkansas and Wyoming are the only states in the U.S. without a hate crime law. Business leaders in South Carolina have made approval one of their top priorities.
Republican leaders are dealing with the wishes of the business community and the fears of some of its more conservative members that the bill could infringe on religious groups. They fear that they may be accused of harassment or harassment when they speak out against homosexuality or abortion.
Hate must be combated, whether it leads to horrific murder or racist or anti-Semitic vandalism, said Representative Weston Newton.
“I believe that. I think it needs to move forward,” said Bluffton’s Republican about the project. “But making sausage is not pretty.”
The Democrats who sponsored the bill threatened to vote against it if it was watered down. Congresswoman Beth Bernstein reluctantly decided not to oppose the amendment that removes harassment and harassment from the bill.
“If a black church is defiled with graffiti using the n-word, that would not be a hate crime,” Bernstein, a Democrat from Columbia, said of the measure.
Members of the Chamber have already eliminated the possibility of suing the civil court for an odious act and have given judges greater freedom for the sentence that can be added to a crime if it is determined that it was motivated by hatred.
The bill amounted to five years in prison for someone convicted of murder, assault or another violent crime fueled by hatred. If the other provisions are restored, the bill would add up to three years for harassment or harassment and an extra year behind bars for vandalism.
The Judiciary Committee also unanimously agreed to nominate the “Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crime Act” bill in honor of the state senator who was also pastor of the Emanuel AME church when Dylann Roof attended a Bible study class afterwards killed Pinckney and eight others in a racist massacre in June 2015.
Roof was convicted of hate crimes in federal court and sentenced to death.
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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.