The Charleston, South Carolina, County Council is resisting the state’s law requiring local board members to swear an oath to the U.S. Constitution, reversing its recent decision to make the Charleston County Public Library’s Board of Trustees follow the rule in a Thursday evening vote.
State Sen. Matt Leber (R) has been leading the charge in favor of upholding the Constitution in every facet of public service, verifying with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson that the state’s constitution requires the library board members to make the pledge.
“I requested an opinion from the South Carolina Attorney General,” Leber told Breitbart News earlier in March. “He said, ‘Oh, it’s, it’s definitely in the law. These folks have to swear an oath to the Constitution.’ And I started to insist on that, and as you can imagine, it just devolved from there.”
Shortly after the legislator’s remarks to Breitbart News, the library board asked the county council to decide if board members should take the oath — and they shot it down, WCBD reported.
At the next council meeting, board members switched their votes to be in favor of the oath.
Then, during Thursday’s meeting, they again reversed their decision in a 7-2 vote and passed a motion to “defer the implementation of the oath policy until they receive clear guidance from the General Assembly,” the outlet reported.
The next vote will occur next Tuesday to solidify that motion decision.
Councilman Brantley Moody (R) said he agrees with enforcing the oath policy, but needs guidance from state legislators on how to implement it:
We learned through the last week and a half, that our clerk has been spending 24 hours a day trying to do the state’s work, trying to figure out how to implement this policy of taking the oath, which we all support. Our position tonight is we need to have the general assembly and folks in Columbia give direction to all 46 counties. Charleston County should not be writing legislation for the entire. Everybody up there is in favor of taking the oath we just need to know how to do it.
Leber stated that eight of the 11 members of the library board have refused to pledge to uphold the Constitution, prompting him to call for their termination:
Following Thursday evening’s reversal, he complained that “these people simply do not want to take the most Honorable American Oath”:
He is set to hold a press conference outside the U.S. Custom House in Charleston on Friday at 4:30 p.m. to discuss the matter, saying the vote is “contrary to existing law”:
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