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Date Published: February 6, 2005
Court usurped legislative role when striking USC Sumter
Life sciences or economic development?
It all came down to definitions, as determined by the state
Supreme Court ruling last week on Act No. 187, also known as the
Life Sciences Act, which included four-year status for the
University of South Carolina Sumter. The court, in a 4-1 decision,
declared the act, passed last year by the General Assembly,
overriding Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto, to be unconstitutional because
its provisions were not germane “to the one subject of the Life
Sciences Act,” as stated in the majority opinion.
Eleven
sections of the act were deleted, and the four-year status for USC
Sumter was one of the sections axed. Whether the local campus can
ever obtain that status will be difficult, given the obstacles put
in place by the court, which assumed the role of legislating by its
decision.
As state Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, noted, “You
look at the opinion and it looks like they decided what result they
wanted and started at the end and went forward.” What’s more, said
Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, the ruling was inconsistent with past
decisions.
At least one of the justices agreed with local
legislators that the act was about economic development, not life
sciences. Justice Costa Pleicones, the lone dissenter, focused on
what the act was all about, and he came to the conclusion that “The
majority’s view of what constitutes a subject is too narrow,” as he
cited previous high court rulings, one of which said the article in
question in the state constitution is to “be liberally construed,
and construed so as to uphold (an act) if practicable
(italics ours).”
But practicality was not the intent of
the court, and it chose to take the narrow interpretation route. In
Pleicones’ words, “the court should read the provisions of Act 187
together, not in isolation ... Act 187 addresses various aspects of
economic development, including a knowledge-based workforce, the
life-sciences industry, research, education, venture capital,
permanent improvements, and tourism. I would uphold Act 187 in its
entirety.”
Furthermore, Pleicones disagreed with the
majority that Act 187 is “teeming with subjects ... If Act 187 were
indeed an indulgence in log rolling, then it should be declared
unconstitutional in its entirety. Log rolling undermines the
legislative process and the democratic principle of majority rule.”
Instead, the court arbitrarily cherry-picked provisions of
the act it deemed defective and “severed” them from the bill. In the
most damning portion of his dissent, Pleicones wrote that “Employing
the severability clause in Act 187 turns the Court into a
super-legislature.”
In other words, the court defined what
the definition of “is” is, so to speak. Instead of being fish, the
act became fowl, in the opinion of the majority. Pure and simply, it
indeed assumed the role of a super-legislature. Unfortunately,
Pleicones was outnumbered by his colleagues on the court who
rejected his sensible reasoning and earned the approval of the
elitist power structure in the state that resents any grassroots
initiatives, such as USC Sumter’s, at economic development, which
would clearly be one of the results of four-year status.
The
motives of the elitist crowd is quite clear in an editorial from one
of its leading mouthpieces located west of the Wateree River, which
stated that “The USC Sumter episode provides the most recent and
vivid example of how lack of central oversight can contribute to
unnecessary duplication and unacceptable expansion in schools’
missions. USC Sumter and its boosters are not alone in their designs
on a larger role, one that runs directly counter to crafting the
most effective and affordable higher education system for our
state.”
Central oversight – that’s what it’s all about. And
it must, you see, emanate from the ivory towers to the west, where
the plantation owners reside, dispensing wisdom to the hinterlands
and keeping the sharecroppers in their rightful place. An obliging
state Supreme Court majority also took its place as the newest class
of sharecroppers by doing the bidding of the plantation owners. One
lonely voice, that of Justice Costa Pleicones, showed he had not
only precedent on his side, but also a backbone.
Too bad his
colleagues didn’t.
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February 8, 2005 
