COLUMBIA - The state Supreme Court's decision last week has legislators exercising more caution than usual on how they put together bills.

Last week, the high court said the Legislature went too far last year in packing different issues into a single bill.

The bill started out in the House as an effort to create high-paying, technology-related jobs. But by the time the Life Sciences Act emerged from the Senate, it had more than a dozen unrelated items tacked on, or bobtailed, including an a culinary arts program at a Charleston college and convention center in Myrtle Beach.

The court's decision left standing parts of the law that began as a research and economic development tool, including the efforts to jobs and give tax breaks to pharmaceutical companies on the equipment they buy. But it ditched many of the add-ons.

Even before the court's decision, the Senate decided to change its ways. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Larry Martin said the Senate now has a much stricter rule that makes sure amendments are closely related, or germane, to a bill's main subject.

"I think the Supreme Court narrowed the focus of the one-subject rule pretty much along the lines that we've narrowed it under the Senate germaneness rule," said Martin, R-Pickens.

With the rule changes, "I don't see this opinion as helping us in any way," said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

The ruling can be restrictive when legislators want it to be, McConnell said. Legislators who want few amendments to their bills will be able to curb changes by specifically saying what the subject of the bill is in its title.

But the reverse is true, too, McConnell said. If the title of the Life Sciences Act had described the bill as being on the subject of economic development, the outcome in court likely would have been different, McConnell said.

The lesson is simple, McConnell said.

"If you're worried about baggage on your bills, write your titles real tight," McConnell said. "And if you want to have room to maneuver with a bill then you write your title real broad," he said.

The latter strategy already is playing out as the Senate prepares to take up a bill aimed at limiting lawsuits and jury awards.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee took up a package of more than a dozen bills on that topic this week, it decided to pack all of them into two bills. Martin says those bills fall under the single subject of tort reform and would satisfy the high court's standard.

In the House, Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, doesn't think the decision "will have much impact on the way we do business."

But it may affect how conference committees work out differences. The House and Senate sometimes give conference committees powers to add items to bills that neither chamber has considered. The ruling could curb that, he said.

Wilkins and others say the House may have to scrap rules that open the door to so-called bobtailing. Rules there say a committee can amend any Senate bill with the contents of any bill the House has passed.

"We are having that researched as we speak," Wilkins said last week. "Maybe we just don't do it."

House staff won't complete that research until next week, said Christy Cox, Wilkins' chief of staff.

"I think this opinion puts that rule in grave question," McConnell said. "I think they would be best served to read this opinion and not go dragging House bills onto Senate bills," McConnell said.

"We haven't done that this year," Wilkins said. The rule will be changed if necessary, he said.

Wilkins wouldn't comment on the Senate's past use of a similar tactic.

The decision also takes a tool away from legislators on the winning side of an issue who sometimes use off-topic amendments to win support from opponents in the minority.

"They kind of took that off the table," Senate Minority Leader John Land, D-Manning, said.