House speaker Jay Lucas wants a constitutional amendment to add 2 more Supreme Court justices.

He also is sponsoring a bill to keep lawmakers in control of electing judges.

Lawmakers pick our state judges and pay them well but they are not supposed to be above the law.

Yet the SC Judicial Department won’t tell which judges have been disciplined.

In October, the department denied our request under the state Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) for a list of judicial staff making at least $50,000 annually.

Less than 3 hours after we published their refusal, they released the salaries.

On Dec. 10, we asked for the names of:

• The judges who received disciplinary sanctions or had other actions against them.

• All 26 members of the Commission on Judicial Conduct that polices judges’ ethical conduct.

Court officials never responded despite 2 written reminders also sent to Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty and spokeswoman Ginny Jones that they had missed a legal deadline under the FoIA.

SC Press Association attorney Taylor Smith who also represents the Chronicle, said if the Judicial Branch and its Court Administration, does not respond to an open records request under the FoIA in the required 10 or 20 business days, the request is deemed approved and the information should be provided in the next 30 or 35 calendar days.

If the records aren’t provided, they have violated state law and are subject to a lawsuit, he said.

“Should this change in a case because the defendant is the administration over judges in the state? No, at least not if no one is above the law under our state constitution and laws.”

In 2019, we revealed that over the previous 17 years, court officials issued more than 250 private “letters of caution” to judges.

But the records didn’t indicate which judges received caution letters.

The public usually has no way to know the seriousness of complaints or if they warranted stronger discipline.

Under the FoIA, the department had 20 business days to indicate if the requested records exist.

That deadline has since passed meaning under state law, the request “must be considered approved.” Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve. Contact him at 803-254-4411.