Most people picture a law as something complete, a set of rules that operates on its own. In reality, laws rarely stand alone. Many serve as the foundation for a second layer of rules known as regulations. Think of it this way. If a law is the blueprint for a house, regulations are the detailed construction manual that tells you exactly how to build each room, what materials to use, and where every electrical outlet goes. The difference is that while you voted on the blueprint, someone else gets to write the manual.
In South Carolina, there are thousands (80k+) of regulations in effect. This is a heavily regulated state, and a significant number of those rules are legally binding on you, the citizen, and must be followed. State agencies are the entities that propose regulations, and in fact, they are responsible for the entire process of adopting, amending, and repealing them. Here, the focus is on legislative, or substantive, regulations, the type issued under statutory authority that carries the same legal weight as the law itself. Agency directors, whether at the Department of Health, Transportation, or elsewhere, hold full control over drafting these rules. The General Assembly indeed approves regulations, but if the General Assembly does nothing with a regulation during the review period, it becomes law automatically after 110 days. This means your elected representatives can do nothing - skip every meeting, ignore every constituent call, take a four-month vacation, and these regulations still become binding law. There are also specific types of regulations that are exempt from legislative review entirely, which means the automatic approval process does not even apply.
Out of the 50 states, South Carolina has the 36th most restrictions, but our state’s regulatory restrictions are among the most complex in the country and have grown in number by more than six percent since 2019. ~ Regulatory Reform in South Carolina: Opportunities and Challenges in the Palmetto State January 7, 2025
All this regulation talk only starts to matter when you see the real problem behind it. The process of agencies creating regulations is standard procedure, but it becomes far more powerful when the legislation feeding it is flawed. That happens when a bill is written with sloppy language that leaves open questions, when the wording is vague enough to be bent in almost any direction, when the scope is so broad it can be stretched far beyond what was discussed in public, or when the text is so confusing that even those voting for it would struggle to explain it. Some bills are weak from the start, built as nothing more than a shell for the agency to fill in later. Others are flawed by design, leaving the real decisions in the hands of the agency. It’s rare to read a bill without running into these flaws.
Watch how this plays out.
Example: The South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 59 – Education, contains the laws governing public education. With these laws comes an entire set of educational regulations found mainly in Chapter 43 of the Code of Regulations. Open any of them and you’ll find long PDFs filled with detailed rules. The State Board of Education has the authority to issue regulations on curriculum standards, teacher certification requirements, testing procedures, and more. These rules directly affect students, parents, and educators, though the substance is not written into the statute itself.
That is why, whenever an elected official boldly proclaims that parents have the right to direct the education of their children, it isn’t entirely accurate, at least not in public schools. The laws and the regulations together set the boundaries, and those boundaries dictate what parents are allowed to do.
Another example is Regulation Number 61, which covers a large group of health-related administrative regulations issued under the authority of Title 44. How many of these came from sloppy legislation? How many of these did you know about before they were approved, or even know they existed?
Want to see more regulations? Take a look here.
The point of all of this is to warn you that if you support a bill, you need to be certain it is something you truly want and that you are willing to be ruled by what is regulated. Once a bill becomes law, it opens the door for state agencies to write the rules that will govern it. They will regulate according to what the law allows, and when that law contains gaps, those gaps are often wide enough to give agencies broad and lasting control.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal or professional advice. ConservaTruth assumes no liability for any actions taken based on this content. Read more.
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