HOLLYWOOD — Town Council passed a new hate crime ordinance, joining more than two dozen other South Carolina municipalities that have targeted bias-related crimes.
Council members voted unanimously for the ordinance during a second reading Sept. 28, garnering a round of “amens” and applause. The ordinance allows Hollywood to impose fines and jail time for acts of bias and hate.
“Other towns have jumped on board, and we want everyone to know that we don’t tolerate hate in this community,” Mayor Chardale Murray said.
State Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, spoke before the vote, noting first how the S.C. General Assembly failed to pass legislation in the wake of the Mother Emanuel AME shootings in 2015, where nine Black church members were killed by a white supremacist.
After that legislative failure, he said Black lawmakers began to encourage municipalities to pass local ordinances. “The journey has been long and hard, but people in this room believe in justice for all.”
South Carolina is one of two states without hate crime legislation, according to the Municipal Association of South Carolina. On the local level, however, at least 25 other towns and cities have passed hate crime laws and resolutions, including Charleston, North Charleston, Mount Pleasant and Summerville, the association said.
Last year, the S.C. Attorney General issued a non-binding opinion that the state constitution likely would make hate crime ordinances “off limits” should the S.C. Supreme Court rule on it.
The opinion said that municipalities can’t create laws that criminalize activity that may be legal in other parts of the state. The framers of the state constitution “wished to avoid a ‘patchwork’ of criminal laws,” the opinion said.