COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina is about to trade it entirely male Supreme Court stands for an all-white.
The General Assembly, which elects nearly all state judges, is expected to elevate Court of Appeals Judge Letitia Verdin to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. The white woman will take the seat of Chief Justice Don Beatty, who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 72. Beatty is black.
Verdin is the only candidate left after that two others dropped out when they realized they couldn’t get enough votes in the 170-seat legislature. One candidate was a black woman and the other a white man.
“She will make an excellent Supreme Court justice. I’m glad we have that diversity now,” said Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, an African-American Democrat who was a classmate at Verdin’s law school. “But we should not trade diversity. We need to scrutinize the entire legal system.”
For the past seventeen years — and all but seven years since 1984 — South Carolina has had a black justice on its highest court. A woman or a black man has been chief justice in all but one of the past thirty years.
Ernest Finney became the state’s first African-American circuit judge since Reconstruction in 1976. Eight years later, civil rights leaders cheered his appointment to the state Supreme Court.
It showed that black people are present at every level of the state’s justice system, even as Finney was sometimes invited to speak in his role as a judge at private clubs that refused to admit African Americans.
“Not only did he do an excellent job, he also elevated the reputation of the justice system,” said attorney IS Leevy Johnson, who first member of the Black House since Reconstruction in 1971 and became the first black leader of the South Carolina Bar the same year Finney joined the Supreme Court.
“He instilled confidence in the system to people of color who historically — since long before Dred Scott — have not had to feel any confidence,” Johnson added, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which it was declared that African Americans were not citizens.
A number of black lawyers followed Finney’s path. They have also reached retirement age. Only 13% of trial and appellate court judges are black, in a state where 27% of the population is black. Only one judge of color – a black man sits on the nine-judge Court of Appeals, which is often the training ground for the Supreme Court.
“I never thought we would stop making progress, let alone go backwards,” Johnson said.
According to the American newspaper South Carolina, South Carolina joins 18 other states with all-white supreme courts Brennan Center for Justicethat tracks diversity and other issues in legal systems.
Twelve of those states have at least 20% minority populations, the organization reported.
But Verdin’s election will take South Carolina out of an even more select group. The state Supreme Court was the only one in the country without a woman. The all-male court ruled 4-1 last year to uphold a ban on abortions from about six weeks after conception, before many women know they are pregnant. Beatty, the outgoing chief justice, was the only vote against.
That decision came after the woman who wrote the majority opinion in a 3-2 ruling By removing a similar ban in 2023, she retired due to her age. Lawmakers made minor adjustments to the law, allowing for another review by the Supreme Court.
The new chief justice of the court promises a renewed impetus for more diversity within the court. But John Kittredge said only the General Assembly, where 118 of the 170 members are Republican, can make that happen.
General Assembly leaders have expressed concerns about the lack of diversity, though in recent years they have also expressed dissatisfaction with rulings on abortion, the death penalty, low bonds and lighter sentences.
Republican Chairman Murrell Smith said this Supreme Court election will mean five “real, bona fide conservatives” will be on the court last month at a telephone town hall organized by the conservative advocacy group Americans For Prosperity.
A former Democratic lawmaker has led the state Supreme Court every year but one since 2000.
“So that will be a huge win for us,” Smith said, according to the Newspaper of South Carolina.
Devine doesn’t see a simple solution to making the courts more diverse. Some judges of color want to make more money in the private sector.
The senator said some also find the election process demeaning. It involves a screening that delves deeply into a candidate’s background and finances, as well as waiting in a parking garage or simply inside doorways to get a few minutes with lawmakers whose minds may already be made up.
“The system has to change. It seems like it’s meant to humiliate people who don’t want to be humiliated,” Devine said.
Devine is happy for her law school friend Verdin, who received near-unanimous praise for her abilities and behavior in anonymous surveys when she ran for the Supreme Court this year.
But Devine said many lawyers of color don’t worry about that because they think the system is broken.
“This is not about quotas or affirmative action,” Devine said. “This is about the lives of real people in South Carolina and whether they have a judiciary that is fair, impartial and reflects the diversity of this state.”