South Carolina Disabled Veteran License Plates

2021 Act No. 38 repealed the old scattered veteran plate sections and rebuilt the whole scheme as Article 149 of Chapter 3, Title 56, effective May 6, 2022. Section 56-3-14940 is the service-connected disability section. Four designs, all on the same test. Disabled Veteran; Disabled Veteran (wheelchair); Disabled Female Veteran; Disabled Female Veteran (wheelchair). For each, "the applicant must be considered totally and permanently disabled due to a service-connected disability as evidenced by official military documentation." The two wheelchair variants add a second condition: the applicant must also qualify for handicapped parking privileges under Section 56-3-1910 and follow that section's application process, which means a certification form completed by a physician licensed in South Carolina. Subsection (C) names the document: "a letter indicating the appropriate disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs." The VA benefit summary letter that states the total and permanent finding is what to bring. Three plates, and free. Subsection (B) allows no more than three license plates and exempts them from the regular motor vehicle registration fee in Article 5 of Chapter 3. The 2022 amendment made that an exemption rather than a subjection and added a refund clause: "Any registration fees collected pursuant to this section from May 6, 2022, to the effective date of this act shall be refunded by the Department of Motor Vehicles." A veteran who paid registration on a disabled veteran plate in that window was owed the money back. Now the parking, which guides get wrong in one direction and this entry first got wrong in the other. Look at the structure of the article. Section 56-3-14910, valorous awards, has a subsection (D) granting the holder the right to "park in metered or timed parking places without being subject to parking fees or fines". Section 56-3-14920, distinguished service awards, has the identical subsection (D). Section 56-3-14930, exemplary service awards, which is Gold Star Family, Prisoner of War and Purple Heart, has the identical subsection (D). Section 56-3-14940, service-connected disability, does not. Its subsection (D) is the Section 56-3-8100 exemption and nothing else. So under Article 149 a Medal of Honor recipient, a Silver Star recipient, a Purple Heart recipient, a former prisoner of war and a Gold Star family member all park free at a meter, and a veteran rated totally and permanently disabled from a service-connected disability does not, on the strength of this plate. Article 149 is not the only statute, though. Section 56-5-2585, in the traffic chapter since 1976, reads in full: "Disabled veterans and recipients of the Purple Heart are exempt from the payment of municipal parking meter fees when their vehicles bear a disabled veteran's or Purple Heart license plate issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles." That section is still in force as this is written, so a vehicle bearing one of these plates is exempt from municipal meter fees until it goes. It is narrower than the Article 149 right: municipal meters only, not timed spaces and not state or other public parking. 2026 Act No. 115 (H. 3856), a Department of Motor Vehicles act signed April 6, 2026, repeals Section 56-5-2585 in its section 14 and takes effect six months after approval, on October 6, 2026. From that date there is no free metered parking with these plates. The Purple Heart plate keeps its exemption through Section 56-3-14930(D); the disabled veteran plates lose theirs entirely. The published code will print Section 56-5-2585 until the next edition, so a meter attendant or a veteran reading the code after October 6 will see a repealed section. What the wheelchair variants give, before and after the repeal, is access to designated handicapped parking spaces under Section 56-3-1910, which is a different and in many places more useful right. Two dead cross-references sit next to this section and both point at the repealed Sections 56-3-1110 to 56-3-1130. Section 56-3-1910(I) still reads: "A person who qualifies for a license plate under this section and also qualifies as a disabled veteran under Section 56-3-1110 must be issued the license plate provided for in this section free of charge." Section 56-3-1110 was repealed effective May 6, 2022. The free handicapped plate for a disabled veteran now rests on a definition that is not in the code. And Section 12-37-220(B)(3), the vehicle property tax exemption, conditions itself on plates issued "under the provisions of Sections 56-3-1110 to 56-3-1130". That is covered in the vehicle exemption entry; the practical answer is to use the certificate route in the same item. Section 56-3-15000 protects anyone already holding a plate: "License plates first issued to registrants under previous requirements are not subject to the revised requirements that a person must meet to apply for a plate specified in this article." A veteran who got a wartime disabled veteran plate in 1998 does not have to requalify. Section 56-3-14970(A)(3) carries a separate designation worth knowing: Combat-Related Disabled Veteran, where "the registrant must have a combat-related disability as evidenced by a letter from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs defining a combat and operations-related disability". That plate is subject to the regular registration fee but no additional specialty fee, and it does not require total and permanent disability. A veteran with a combat-related disability below the total rate has that design available when Section 56-3-14940 is closed to them.