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Rutherford amendment to bind magistrate rulings is tabled as House Judiciary advances sweepstakes bill
Summary
The House Judiciary Committee gave a favorable report to Senate Bill 3 (the "sweepstakes" bill), which clarifies that electronic gambling machines are not covered by a sweepstakes exception. An amendment from Rep. Rutherford to make magistrate rulings binding on law enforcement until appealed was tabled 14–6.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced Senate Bill 3 — called the sweepstakes bill — after debate and a roll-call-style show of hands on a key amendment. Mr. Bannister, reporting for the constitutional law subcommittee, said the bill "clarifies that that was not an exception to the prohibition against gambling devices, electronic gambling devices."
Rep. Rutherford proposed an amendment to give magistrate and chief magistrate rulings that a machine is permissible binding on law enforcement until reversed on appeal. Rutherford said the change would prevent what he described as "judge shopping" and repeated seizures of machines that judges had found legal: "They go after people that they don't. ... They keep coming back to your place of business every day despite a judge telling him every time he comes that it's legal."
Others on the committee questioned whether the amendment was necessary. One member said the bill as drafted already makes the targeted machines illegal and asked how an amendment making magistrate rulings binding would be applicable if the device is outlawed under the statute. The committee then voted to table the Rutherford amendment; the chair announced the tabling by a hand vote of 14 in favor and 6 opposed.
After tabling the amendment, the committee moved and approved a favorable report on Senate Bill 3. Bannister told the panel that the Attorney General's office and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) had testified that an exception had been used to justify possession of machines and that the bill was intended to remove ambiguity in the statute so electronic gambling machines could not be marketed as sweepstakes devices.
The committee’s action advances S.3 out of the Judiciary Committee; the next steps are whatever scheduling the House leadership sets for the bill. The committee recorded the tabling vote as 14–6 and announced the favorable report on S.3 at the same meeting.
