COLUMBIA - SC Women in Leadership (SC WIL) will honor former South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Kaye Hearn (pictured) as their 2024 Leading Woman at the annual Leading Women Dinner on September 24, 2024, at 701 Whaley Street in Columbia. SC WIL is a statewide multi-partisan organization working to inform, inspire, and involve qualified women in elected and public appointed leadership.
The Leading Women Dinner recognizes and celebrates South Carolina women who have stepped forward to seek elective (win or lose) and appointive office, honors women who have blazed trails in civic leadership, and builds a support network to encourage women to vie for civic leadership roles. The Leading Woman award recognizes a woman who has devoted themself to community service, exemplifies the principles of cooperation and collaboration, and has recently achieved a significant accomplishment or milestone that has a statewide or national civic impact. SC WIL also bestows annually the Leadership Legacy and Rising Star awards to be announced later this summer.
Justice Kaye Hearn was elected to the Supreme Court of South Carolina in May of 2009, becoming only the second woman member in the court’s history. At the time of her retirement from the High Court in April 2023, she was the longest-serving member of the South Carolina State Court Judiciary. Prior to her election to the state’s highest court, Justice Hearn was a member of the South Carolina Court of Appeals for fifteen years, serving as its Chief Judge for ten years. During her tenure as Chief Judge, Justice Hearn served as President of the Council of Chief Judges, a nationwide network of chief judges of the intermediate appellate courts. From 1986 until her election to the Court of Appeals in 1995, she served as a Family Court Judge. Prior to going on the bench, Justice Hearn was a trial attorney and served as a member of the South Carolina Board of Bar Examiners. Immediately upon graduation from law school, she served as a law clerk to South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Julius B. Ness. She is the only former law clerk to return to the Court as a Justice. She now practices at Wyche with a focus on litigation and appellate advocacy.
The judicial election resulting from Justice Hearn’s mandatory retirement from the Court (due to age) left South Carolina with the only all-male Supreme Court in the nation. With another judicial election imminent upon the mandatory retirement of Justice Donald Beatty on July 31, 2024, Hearn advocated that to administer justice fairly and impartially, the Court should be representative of the people whom the Court serves. Her influence with the Judicial Merit Selection Committee, which recommends judicial candidates, and the S.C. General Assembly, which elects judges in South Carolina, was instrumental in the consideration of qualified female candidates and securing the unanimous election of a female Justice on June 5, 2024. Justice Letitia Verdin will be the third female member in the history of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.
“The election of Justice Verdin is a great victory toward equal justice for all South Carolinians,” says Barbara Rackes, SC WIL board president. “The victory would not have been ours if Justice Hearn had not been closely watching the judicial selection process and called for the representation of half of our population on the Court. We celebrate her personal achievements as an example to aspiring women and girls that there is a place for them in the judiciary. We commend her belief in upholding the civil rights of all South Carolinians.”
To address gender inequality in leadership, SC WIL has undertaken More in 2024, an ambitious year-long push to recruit and train women from across the state to run for elected office and apply to serve on public boards and commissions. Their recruitment effort aims to infuse more than 800 women into the pipeline to public leadership in South Carolina this year.
The Leading Women Dinner, previously hosted by the Southeastern Institute for Women in Politics, includes a V.I.P. reception, open beer and wine bar, seated dinner, and awards. Corporate sponsorships, tables, and individual tickets are available. Proceeds from the event support SC WIL’s mission of recruiting and training women to run for elective and appointive office in South Carolina.
