COLUMBIA - A $7 million allocation for an international trade center in Myrtle Beach came under tough scrutiny by the state Supreme Court on Thursday in a case the chief justice called "the granddaddy of all bobtailing bills."

The $500 million Life Sciences Act funded economic-development projects centered around university research and was passed during the last session after both the House and Senate overrode the governor's veto. Arguments before the Supreme Court wrapped up Thursday, but the court usually takes about six months to issue a ruling.

Bobtailing is the nickname given to the practice of attaching unrelated items to bills. Often those items are inserted by powerful legislators to bypass the routine system of debate and committee study.

That's the problem, said Jim Carpenter, attorney for Greenville businessman Ed Sloan, who sued over the $500 million Life Sciences Act because he thinks it violated the constitutional provision that bills must contain one subject and it must be stated in their title.

Michael Hitchcock, attorney for the General Assembly, said the act does contain one subject, and it is job creation.

Carpenter said the purpose of the provision was to prevent legislation from being passed without proper consideration and approval of the majority.

Rather than one subject, the Life Sciences Act has "at least 15 separate subjects," Carpenter said. The court must decide if the subjects are related enough to meet the definition of one subject, he said.

"This court must decide whether a trade center at Myrtle Beach relates to a technical school at Orangeburg," and a string of other inclusions, he said.

The offer of up to $7 million in bonds to buy land for the center was hailed by county tourism leaders as a key aid in getting it off the ground.

Carpenter wants the law nullified.

Attorney General Henry McMaster said part of the act is constitutional and the court should simply strike out the parts that are not.

"There are several portions that can easily be stricken out," and the trade center is one of them, McMaster said.

But most of the law is valid, he said.

Its purpose was to create money and incentives for biotechnology research at the three research universities that would foster new business and new jobs.

Chief Justice Jean Toal questioned whether the high court has any legal foundation for declaring part of a law legal and striking parts of it.

Hitchcock said Sloan is confusing the means to carry out the purpose of the law with the subject matter, which is expanding a knowledge-based economy.

Toal asked how a trade center at Myrtle Beach fits with that goal.

Hitchcock said the trade center expands educational opportunity, as does a culinary school funded in Charleston that Associate Justice James Moore questioned.

"Tourism is the No. 1 industry in the state, and the No. 1 attractor of people to the state," Hitchcock said. The trade center and culinary school are part of a larger picture of education and economic development, he said.

"Every piece of the legislation is germane to facilitating the overall purpose of job development," he said.

The court should leave the law alone because legislators took legal precedent on bobtailing into account when they drafted the bill and when they put the title on it, he said.