As the country attempts to understand the shooting of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin, the SC AFL-CIO calls for justice for Treyvon’s family and supports Rep. Bakari Sellers’ proposed bill to repeal the “stand your ground” provision of South Carolina’s “Protection of Persons and Property Act” enacted in 2006.

“We have long had laws on the books that allowed for legitimate self defense,” said SC AFL-CIO Vice President Ken Riley. “These new laws are being used by vigilantes to excuse frontier justice against unarmed people. People of color have a deadly serious reason to fear that this law provides bigots an excuse to shoot somebody as their first option to resolve a problem.”

The state’s “stand your ground” clause was recently used in the defense of a white Spartanburg home owner who shot a homeless man who was squatting in a vacant house for sale. District Solicitor Barry Barnette said the shooting was justified under the “stand your ground” provision of the state law. “Obviously, your have a right to defend your property,” Barnette told the Spartanburg Herald Journal about the shooting.

The SC AFL-CIO believes these unnecessary laws conflict with its commitment to equal rights and due process for all citizens. “These new laws have no place on the books of a society that considers itself civilized,” Riley said.

The SC AFL-CIO supports Rep. Sellers’ bill that would strike the section of the statute that states, “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be, including, but not limited to, his place of business, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person to prevent the commission of a violent crime as defined in Section 16-1-60.”