March 2024 Advocacy Updates

Federal Level 

• LLF has been connecting members to Sen Graham’s staff to share stories and the negative impacts of unrestrained and excessive credit card fees on their business. See: Fact Sheet: Credit Card Swipe Fees — A Hidden Monopoly Tax on Small Businesses and Shoppers 

State Level 

• Regulation shift impacting food producers/retailers: The South Carolina Department of Agriculture is taking over DHEC’s food safety programs effective July 1, 2024. The South Carolina Department of Agriculture will take over regulation of: 
  - Retail food safety (restaurant kitchens, grocery stores, caterers, school cafeterias, some convenience stores, and more) 
  - Dairy and Milk 
  - Wholesale bottled water, soft drinks, and ice manufacturing
  Learn more. 
  
  
• Impacting Local Booksellers, Readers: 
  Two active pieces of state legislation:  
  

• • SC H 4701 & H 4654 are essentially clones of the Texas READER Act. They would both force vendors of school and library materials to issue ratings for “sexually explicit” and “sexually relevant” material, which essentially encompass any depiction of a sex act regardless of literary, artistic, or educational merit of the work as a whole. Those ratings would need to be supplied retroactively for any material sold previously to school districts or charter schools by September 1, 2024, otherwise vendors will be blacklisted and not permitted to sell to schools until they are in compliance. These ratings will need to be updated annually. The cost of this provision is likely to constitute a de facto ban on small vendors doing business with schools, as it may outweigh the expected revenue or simply be impracticable. Both bills are in the SC House Committee on Education and Public Works. 
  • SC H 3826, H 3706, and S 506 are all titled “Protection of Minors from Pornography and Obscenities Act” but in fact make the definition of obscenity so capacious that it would make thousands of classics and contemporary works regulated as pornography. It would make the distribution of material any portion of which depicts a sex act or contains profane language to be considered harmful to minors. Knowing distribution or sale of this material to minors would constitute a felony. In practice, it may make bookstores 18+ institutions by default, decimate the stock after a ruinously expensive review process, or force the creation of impractical “adults only” sections. These bills are all in the Committee on Judiciary of the SC House and Senate.

Other things we dig: 

• In 2022, a group of Black immigrant businesswomen in MSP created a commercial property collective to raise money to buy a strip mall. Together, they have saved $300,000 and leveraged an additional $5.2 million from other sources, making it possible for them to buy the Shingle Creek Center last October. The strip mall has 18 storefronts, 14 of which are now occupied. - Next City, February 20, 2024 

• The New Jersey Economic Development Authority has created a new grant program to help small business owners buy commercial property. The Main Street Acquisition Support Grant will offer grants of up to $50,000 to reimburse small business owners for a portion of the closing costs when they buy a building in which they operate, or will operate, their business. - New Jersey Economic Development Authority, February 20, 2024 

• All the Brands That Took Stands With Their 2024 Super Bowl Ads - TriplePundit.com, February 2024