Type:
Press MentionDate of Release or Mention:
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
By Devyani Chhetri
Greenville News
The South Carolina General Assembly elected Judge Gary Hill to the South Carolina Supreme Court Wednesday, making the state supreme court the only one of its kind in the United States with no woman on the bench. The all-male bench emerges the same week that women's reproductive rights and abortion bans continue to dominate state politics.
Hill, a 58-year-old Greenville resident, will replace the sole female judge Justice Kaye Hearn, who retired because of state law term limits on judgeships. In South Carolina, supreme court justices are picked by the legislature. Hearn authored the majority opinion that quashed the 2021 six-week abortion ban on Jan. 5. In the ruling, the top court ruled the six-week abortion ban was unconstitutional because it violated a woman's privacy rights.
Lynn Teague with the League of Women Voters said that the ruling was justified as there were no legitimate grounds for rehearing and no flaw in the original hearing.
"(Lawmakers are) just hoping that if they keep getting new bites at the apple, they'll get a different result and that's not an appropriate way to deal with the judiciary," Teague said.Several in the legal circle have a great deal of respect for Hill, Teague said. It was regrettable that South Carolina would be the only state not to have a woman on the Supreme Court bench. "But that's not Justice Hill's fault," she said.
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South Carolina
