Copyright Charleston Post and Courier
COLUMBIA — S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson’s recent opinion questioning the legality of local hate crime ordinances has put dozens of measures passed by counties and municipalities under new scrutiny. In his opinion, Wilson, a GOP candidate for governor in 2026, said local officials can’t pass laws that criminalize activity legal elsewhere in the state and warned that local hate crime measures may violate the First Amendment. South Carolina remains one of only two states, along with Wyoming, without a statewide hate crime law. In Richland County, which became the first in the state to pass the law in June, the sheriff’s department is enforcing it. Over the summer, 33-year-old Jonathan Felkel was charged under the county’s hate crime law after deputies said he fired from his car at Jarvis McKenzie, who was jogging in northeast Richland County, and yelled, “Keep running, boy.” Felkel later told investigators he was “really going to do something at first” after seeing “a black man in a white shirt, just standing out there at 4 in the morning,” according to the sheriff’s department, which released video footage of the shooting. Felkel is also charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The law in Richland County, home to about 430,000 residents and the state capital of Columbia, makes it illegal to cause fear, intimidation, harm or property damage because of a person’s race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or disability. If convicted, violators face an added misdemeanor charge that carries up to a $500 fine or up to 30 days in jail. In an interview, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said deputies rely on verbal or written evidence when deciding whether to charge someone under the hate crime ordinance. They also apply the hate crime law only when another crime is committed, he said. “You can yell what you want to, but if you yell something and then do some type of activity, criminal charge, assault, etc., then that can be added to it,” Lott said. Since the ordinance passed, the sheriff’s department has recorded six incidents as “bias-motivated.” It recorded 158 other offenses as bias-motivated between Jan. 1, 2014, and Feb. 10, 2025, before the ordinance passed. Over half of those earlier offenses, though, were reported in 2019 alone. “Our crime analysts are not sure if that was a coding issue on the reports with our records or if there truly was an uptick that year,” spokesperson Allie Salrin-Zammuto said in an email. Of the 158 offenses, 10 targeted Black people, eight targeted gay men, six targeted men, five targeted women and five targeted gender-nonconforming individuals, according to the data. Along with three anti-Arab and anti-Catholic cases, other classifications with one or two incidents included anti-Jehovah’s Witness, anti-multi-religious group, anti-other religion and anti-other ethnicity or national origin. About 65 percent of the offenses were labeled “suspected bias motivation.” Lott, a Democrat, declined to weigh in on Wilson’s opinion, saying he’s “interested in public safety, not politics.” Even so, he said the ordinance shows the community that local leaders won’t tolerate hate crimes. “The federal system has had that for years,” Lott said. “So it's a statement of fairness to everybody probably as much as anything.”
