South Carolina Recording and Confidentiality of a Discharge

Chapter 15 of Title 30 is a small chapter that solves a real identity theft problem, and it does it better than most states. Section 30-15-10 requires each county to keep a book for recording discharges from the military and naval forces of the United States. Section 30-15-20 makes the recording free: "Upon the presentation of any official discharge or official certificate of lost discharge from the armed services of the United States, the clerk of court of any county of the State shall record free such discharge in the book provided for in Section 30-15-10." Section 30-15-60(A) caps the copy fee: a certified copy is furnished on application to the clerk of court of the county where the discharge is registered, and "fees for furnishing a certified copy of discharge or DD 214 form may be established by each county, but shall not exceed fifty cents." Fifty cents is the statutory ceiling, and it has not been indexed. Then the confidentiality provision, which is the reason to record at all. Section 30-15-60(C)(1): "A DD 214 record or other discharge record filed pursuant to this chapter is not a public record for purposes of Chapter 4, Title 30. It is unlawful for any person to permit inspection of any such record, to disclose information contained in the record, or to issue a copy of all or any part of the record, except as authorized by this subsection or by order of a court of competent jurisdiction." Chapter 4 of Title 30 is the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. A recorded DD-214 is carved out of it, and disclosure outside the permitted list is unlawful rather than merely improper. Access on proper identification runs to a defined list beginning with the person who is the subject of the record, or that person's designee. That matters because a DD-214 carries a Social Security number, a date and place of birth and a signature, and for decades county deed books holding them were open to anyone. South Carolina closed the book and made the closure enforceable. Section 30-15-15 handles the veterans who filed before the closure. A person retired or discharged from the armed services who has filed a DD Form 214 with a clerk of court "for safekeeping or other purposes may invalidate this filing and remove it from the public records". The mechanism is simple: the person notifies the clerk of court in writing and under oath that they wish the certificate removed from the public records, and "the clerk of court shall remove the certificate from the public records and return the original to him if available and in possession of the clerk." That is a shall, and it came in with 2005 Act No. 46. Section 30-15-60(B) allows the work to move to the veterans' affairs office. The clerk of court or the register of deeds may designate the county veterans' affairs officer to receive applications and furnish copies, and, subject to county council approval, the clerk and the county veterans' affairs officer may agree in writing to devolve the whole function of receiving, recording and maintaining recorded discharges to the veterans' affairs officer, who may then issue copies. In several counties that is where a veteran should actually go. Section 30-15-40 lets the clerk inquire into the validity of a discharge and requires an oath from the person seeking registration; Section 30-15-50 makes forgery of a discharge an offence; and Section 30-15-30 provides for assistance from the American Legion. One practical note. A recorded discharge is a convenience, not a substitute for the federal record. The National Personnel Records Center holds the original service record, and a county recording is useful precisely because it is faster to reach in an emergency such as a funeral or a hospital admission.