A state legislator who unsuccessfully pushed this year for a law aimed at increasing the number of minority and women judges worries that little will change with the next judicial election.

Rep. Leon Howard, D-Richland, said Wednesday he fears that a state judicial screening committee will nominate few, if any, blacks or women in the upcoming election because of a three-person cap for each seat.

Howard’s bill, which died on the last day of this year’s legislative session, would have eliminated the cap.

Twenty-three candidates filed for seven open Court of Appeals, Administrative Law Court, circuit, master-in-equity and family court seats by the filing deadline Wednesday. The seats will be filled by the state Legislature after it convenes in January; a tentative election date is set for early February.

Of the 23 candidates, three, or 13 percent, are black; and seven, or 30 percent, are women, according to the state Judicial Merit Selection Commission.

The black and women candidates are running in two of the three contested races. In the race for a family court seat in Columbia, for example, five of the 10 candidates are women and one is black.

A State newspaper study published in May found that two-thirds of black candidates in contested races since 1998 have been rejected by the screening committee.

“That’s why it was critical we should have made some changes in this past (legislative) session,” said Howard, who is black

Howard said he plans in the next legislative session to re-introduce his bill to eliminate the nominee cap.

The Legislature didn’t elect any black judges this year, which angered many black lawmakers and spawned a threat by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a national civil rights leader, to sue the state.

State Rep. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, a member of the judicial screening committee, declined Wednesday to comment on the latest judicial election, saying only that it “would be inappropriate for a member of the commission to speak about the candidacy of anyone while they are actually under review by the commission.”

“I wouldn’t want any candidate to feel there was any implied or artificial advantage or disadvantage,” said state Sen. Tommy Moore, D-Aiken, another commission member, when contacted Wednesday.

Moore and Ritchie are white. There are eight white men, one black man and one black woman on the commission. Six of the members, by law, are legislators.

S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal last month proposed that lawmakers add more nonlegislators to the commission to help increase the number of women and minority judges.

A State newspaper study on black judges published in March found that South Carolina’s top courts are among the least diverse in the nation when compared to the overall black state population.

Six, or 10 percent, of the state’s 60 appellate and circuit court judges are black; the same percentage of judges are women. The state’s black population is about 30 percent; females make up 51 percent of the population.

Reach Brundrett at (803) 771-8484 or rbrundrett@thestate.com.