The usual procedural excuse does not apply in South Carolina: the House removed its crossover deadline in 2025
The usual procedural excuse does not apply in South Carolina: the House removed its crossover deadline in 2025
2026-09-19 · South Carolina · Legislation
When a bill dies in the opposite chamber, the standard explanation is that it missed a crossover deadline. In South Carolina's 126th General Assembly that explanation is unavailable, because the House deleted its own deadline at the start of the term.
What the rule said, and what it says now
House Rule 5.12 had provided that no bill or joint resolution from the Senate shall be considered unless received by April tenth in the House, waivable by a two-thirds vote.
H. 3815, a Rules Committee measure, was adopted on January 29, 2025 by a roll call of 63-38. It replaced the text of Rule 5.12 with "(Reserved.)" — removing the April 10 crossover deadline for this General Assembly.1
Why it matters to the HOA bills
Two association bills passed a chamber and then stalled, and in neither case can a deadline explain it.
- H. 3447 passed the House 110-2 on February 27, 2025 and reached Senate Judiciary on March 4, 2025. It sat there for the remaining fourteen months of the term with no recorded action.
- S. 903 passed the Senate 39-0 on April 16, 2026, received third reading April 28, and reached House Labor, Commerce and Industry on April 29 — fifteen days before adjournment, with no rule barring its consideration.
Neither bill was blocked. Neither was voted down. Each was referred and not taken up.
The record that does not exist
When a committee declines to advance a bill without a vote, there is usually no public record of why. The mechanism that would ordinarily supply one — a study committee producing findings and recommendations — has been dormant in South Carolina for over a decade.
The General Assembly does maintain a page for a Homeowners Association Study Committee, created under the fiscal year 2015-16 Appropriation Act. It met three times, on September 29, October 19 and October 27, 2015, and issued its final report on December 18, 2015. That report is still the last entry, and the committee information index records its last update as that same date.2
It did not meet in 2026, and nothing is scheduled. Anyone describing an active South Carolina HOA study committee is describing something that has not convened in eleven years.
A review of the study, ad hoc and special committee index shows the only property-or-insurance-adjacent entries are an Insurance Rate Review Ad Hoc Committee and an Insurance Review and Study Committee, neither updated in 2026. No condominium-safety, coastal-inspection or HOA interim committee met during the year.
The one bill that would have created a record
H. 3235 would have created a Coastal Structural Stability Study Committee, with four structural engineers and two homeowners association members, reporting to the General Assembly by January 1, 2027. It was referred to committee in January 2025 and never acted on.
What the session calendar did and did not allow
The 2026 regular session ran January 13 to May 14. The sine die resolution, S. 883, limited anything taken up after May 14 to appropriations conference reports, vetoes, revenue-shortfall measures, appointments, ceremonial resolutions and congressional redistricting.
Governor McMaster's Executive Order No. 2026-09, issued May 14, 2026, convened an extra session beginning May 15 limited to the General Appropriations Act and congressional districts.3
So once the regular session closed, no window admitted an association bill — but that constraint operated only after May 14, and does not explain the fourteen months H. 3447 spent in a Senate committee before it.
What resets, and what does not
South Carolina's General Assembly sits in two-year terms. Bills carry over from the first regular session to the second; anything unpassed when the second year ends is finished. Committee referrals, favourable committee reports and one-chamber passage all lapse.
The 127th General Assembly convenes in January 2027, with prefiling normally opening in December 2026. A measure that cleared the House 110-2 starts again at first reading.
No sponsor and no organisation has publicly announced a 2027 filing. Three sponsors have filed association bills across more than one term — Rep. Rutherford, Rep. Kilmartin and Sen. Kimbrell — which is a pattern in the record rather than a stated intention.
See the full account of a session that enacted no HOA law and the statutes that remain in force.
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