South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

In a civil forfeiture case, the state need only show probable cause to believe the seized property has a substantial connection to criminal activity; then, the burden shifts to a claimant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that ...

Tagged with: Constitutional

Where a church was aware of zoning restrictions when it purchased property, it could not have had a reasonable expectation of religious land use, dooming its claim under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act or RLUIPA. Because the ...

Where a practicing Muslim detainee argued that he should not be forced to purchase his prayer oils from a commissary that sells swine and idols because Islam prohibits buying religious items from such vendors, the corrections department prevailed at trial ...

Where Virginia’s sex-offender registry law allows an offender who is charged with “carnal knowledge of a child” to be removed from the registry in time if he is less than five years older than his victim, but not if he ...

Where a church alleged that certain COVID-19 executive orders issued by the Virginia governor violated its religious rights, but the orders expired in June 2020 and the state of emergency on which they were predicated ended in July 2021, the ...

South Carolina’s “Disorderly Conduct Law” and its former “Disturbing Schools Law” do not give public schoolchildren notice of the conduct prohibited, and the laws’ subjectivity has led to disproportionate enforcement against children of color and those living with disabilities. The ...

Plaintiff alleges that defendant’s failure to maintain certain furnaces or to install carbon monoxide detectors in its apartments made an eventual death virtually certain, yet plaintiff has not alleged that defendant had any knowledge of an actual carbon monoxide leak ...

Absent a constitutional provision to the contrary, the General Assembly acts and conducts business through majority vote. Therefore, the requirement of S.C. Code An. § 10-1-165(B)—that the Heritage Act could only be amended or repealed by a supermajority—is unconstitutional. However, ...

Where the Fourth Circuit previously held that a federal law banning the purchase of a handgun by persons under 21 violated the Second Amendment, but the plaintiff in that case turned 21 before the mandate issued, her original claims were ...

Where a West Virginia statute governing the order in which candidates’ names appear on state election ballots was neutral and nondiscriminatory, and any modest burden on the Democratic Party’s rights was justified by the state’s interests in promoting efficiency and ...