Gov. Mark Sanford said Thursday he would wait for permission from lawmakers next year to lower the flags at the State House in honor of Rosa Parks — something legal experts say he already could do on his own.

Sanford came under fire from civil rights leaders and others last month for not lowering the flags — as President Bush and many states did — after Parks’ Oct. 24 death at 92.

Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955. That action sparked a boycott and helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

Sanford issued a statement saying he would lower the flags the day he signed legislation granting him that discretion. For the 2006 legislative session, lawmakers have filed three bills that would do just that.

But constitutional law experts from the USC School of Law and the Charleston School of Law insist Sanford doesn’t need legislative approval.

State law spells out when flags can be lowered — but it does not prevent the governor from ordering the flags flown at half-staff in other cases, they said.

The law is not exclusive, it’s permissive, said Eldon Wedlock, a USC constitutional law professor. That means an executive order “can be used and carried out. ... I doubt (Sanford) even looked at the law.”

John Simpkins, a Charleston constitutional law professor, agreed the governor could have simply issued an executive order. He said he thought the governor had been strangely quiet about it.

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said Wedlock and Simpkins are wrong — the law limits the governor’s ability to order the flags to be flown at half-staff in special cases. He also rejected the notion that Sanford could have issued an executive order.

Sawyer said Sanford came to that conclusion based on advice from “legal counsel.” He declined to identify who that legal counsel was and refused to let that person speak to a reporter about it.

“I’m the one that speaks for this office,” Sawyer said.

Top leaders in the Legislature — Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, and House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston — have sponsored the 2006 bills that would explicitly give the governor the authority to lower the flags.

“If there weren’t a deficiency in the law,” Sawyer said, “you wouldn’t be seeing these people filing these bills.”

Sanford urged lawmakers to approve those bills quickly when the session convenes in January so he can sign it and immediately exercise his new authority — and encourage all South Carolinians to lower any flag they may have at their homes and businesses.

“Let me be clear,” Sanford said in his statement. “The state’s flags absolutely should have been lowered for Rosa Parks.”

Some lawmakers criticized Sanford for not ordering the flags lowered when Parks died.

“I have no idea why he didn’t do it,” said state Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland. “He had the authority. It doesn’t make sense to me. I guess when your numbers are plummeting in the polls, you’ll do almost anything to get yourself turned around politically.”

Reach Bandy at (803) 771-8648 or lbandy@thestate.com