Senate leader breaks with AG, says state rule ‘doesn’t stop universal masks’ at USC

One of the highest-ranking South Carolina Republican senators broke with the state’s top attorney Tuesday on a proposed rule requiring masks inside campus buildings at the University of South Carolina.

S.C. Sen. Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said Wednesday there is nothing in state rules nor law that prevents USC from requiring all students, whether they’re vaccinated or not, from wearing masks while indoors on campus.

“I don’t like mandates, but this proviso doesn’t stop universal masks; it prohibits requiring vaccines,” Massey said in a Wednesday tweet.

The Senate Majority Leader’s statement follows a Monday letter from Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, saying USC’s once-proposed — and now reversed — policy of requiring masks indoors violated the legislative intent of a one-year rule meant to ban colleges from requiring vaccines or requiring only unvaccinated people to wear masks.

Following Wilson’s letter, USC walked back its policy, saying people would only be required to wear masks in health facilities and on campus transportation, The State reported previously.

Wilson’s letter to USC was not an official, legal opinion, but was rather an interpretation of the unclear proviso — a one-year law attached to the state budget — and what the legislature meant when it passed the proviso.

Massey is the first prominent Republican to break with Wilson. Tuesday, S.C. Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, whose district includes USC, chastised Wilson in a letter, saying there was no reason for him to “needlessly insert yourself into the business of the university and the deleterious public health consequences that will follow.”

The letters from Wilson and Harpootlian come as hospitalizations and coronavirus cases are surging, which experts believe is because of the delta variant. The delta variant, which originated in India but is likely the dominant strain in South Carolina, may be as contagious as chicken pox and more dangerous than other strains of COVID-19, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.