Emily Kapszukiewicz has spent her career in health care — earning a master’s degree in applied economics and running multimillion-dollar programs. But when the Oregon health care executive tried to invest her own savings in a health care venture fund aligned with her life’s work, the federal government said no.

She fell $150,000 short of the Security and Exchange Commission’s $1 million net worth threshold for “accredited investors.”

The fund later hired her as CEO of one of its portfolio companies. She can lead the company. She just cannot write a check to back it.

That absurdity belongs to most of South Carolina too.

The SEC’s accredited investor rule bars Americans from private markets — venture capital, angel investments, startup equity — unless they have a net worth above $1 million or annual income above $200,000.

South Carolina’s median household income is roughly $72,400, well below that threshold.

Based on income metrics, almost 2 million of the state’s 2.1 million households are locked out entirely — even as venture capital firms have closed over $1.8 billion in South Carolina deals between 2018 and 2023.

The opportunity is flourishing here. Most South Carolinians simply are not allowed to access it.

That is why the Investor Choice Advocates Network (ICAN) filed a landmark federal lawsuit last September — Emily Kapszukiewicz & Healthcare Shares v. SEC — challenging the rule as unconstitutional.

But the courtroom is not the only arena for this fight.

The federal rule handcuffs SC

The SEC’s wealth test is baked directly into state law. And the consequences are now impossible to ignore.

South Carolina’s High Growth Small Business Job Creation Act, also known as the Angel Investor Act — which offered a 35% income tax credit to encourage investment in SC startups — expired at the end of 2025. Legislation to renew it for another 10 years is pending. (The House approved it 90-19 in April 2025.)

Even while it was in force, state law explicitly defined an “angel investor” as someone who must first qualify as “an accredited investor as defined by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.”

The federal wealth gate controlled who could even claim South Carolina’s own tax incentive.

A Boeing engineer in North Charleston or a Medical University of South Carolina researcher in the Charleston Medical District — people who understand local industries better than any Wall Street analyst — could not use South Carolina’s tax code to back a local startup unless they first clear Washington’s arbitrary net worth hurdle.

South Carolina is not alone: Kansas, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Louisiana have made the same legislative mistake. But our residents feel it acutely.

Training investors it cannot unleash

The state is already trying to work around this problem — and the effort itself exposes how absurd the situation has become.

The Palmetto Venture Fellowship, launched by Venture Carolina in partnership with the state Department of Commerce, was created specifically to “create more local accredited investors” and close the funding gap that sends SC entrepreneurs out of state to find capital.

It trains cohorts of hospital administrators, engineers, and executives in term sheets, due diligence, and startup finance — exactly the sophistication the SEC claims to care about.

A 2025 class recently completed the program, and applications are already open for 2026.

But when many fellows complete the program, federal law still bars them from writing a check. And with South Carolina’s own Angel Investor Act — which offered a 35% tax credit for investments in qualifying local startups — now lapsed pending renewal, there is no longer even a state-level incentive for them to deploy their new knowledge into.

South Carolina is spending public resources to educate sophisticated investors it cannot unleash into either a federal private market or its own backyard.

Congress may provide a solution

Courts can remedy this — but Congress might move faster and go further.

South Carolina’s own Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has been championing this reform for years. He grew up in poverty in North Charleston and has said plainly that investing “shouldn’t be an act limited to the wealthy.”

The House took a major step in December 2025, passing the INVEST Act by a bipartisan vote of 302 to 123. The legislation modernizes the accredited investor definition, creates a path for any American to qualify through a publicly available knowledge examination, and removes the barriers locking most South Carolinians out of the private markets growing up around them.

Investor Choice Advocates Network commended that action.

Now the baton passes to the Senate, which can deliver for the Boeing engineers, the MUSC researchers, the Palmetto Venture Fellows, and the communities across this state who are ready and waiting.

Open markets are not merely an economic ideal. They are a South Carolina one.