South Carolina

A conservative legislator in South Carolina has introduced a bill that would require journalists to register with the government in order to work in the state, The Post and Courier's Gavin Jackson and Schuyler Kropf report. The bill also would create requirements for South Carolina journalists before they could being work.

State Rep. Mike Pitts, a Republican, said he introduced the bill because Second Amendment rights are demonized by the press.

The reporters note that the bill has "virtually no chance of advancing but is meant to reflect a lawmaker’s personal political statement."

NPR reports that a federal judge has overturned South Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage today. Richard Gergel, a federal judge in South Carolina, overturned an amendment to the South Carolina Constitution.

A columnist for The State, a newspaper in South Carolina, writes about a unique wrinkle arising out of that state's system for selecting the chief justice of its supreme court: legislators might break with tradition of selecting the longest-serving justice as a matter of course.

The current chief justice and another current justice on the court both have gone through a vetting process with a merit selection commission. Usually, the most senior justice is elevated as a matter of tradition to become the chief justice. But Supreme Court Justice Costa Pleicones is challenging incumbent Chief Justice Jean Toal.

"The Legislature will break precedent if it elects Mr. Pleicones. But even if it re-elects Mrs. Toal, the status quo already has been interrupted, making it much easier for lawmakers to break with tradition and skip over Mr. Pleicones and, who knows, perhaps skip over Mr. Beatty, possibly even select a chief justice who isn’t on the court," Cindi Ross Scoppe wrote.

The issue with all of this? Politicizing a branch of government that is supposed to be apolitical, Scoppe argued.