In 2015, after the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, which killed fellow State Senator Clementa C. Pinckney, Peeler voted against removing the Confederate flag. Peeler compared removing it to "removing a tattoo from the corpse of a loved one and thinking that that would change the loved one's obituary". He was one of only three state senators to vote against its removal, the other two being Danny Verdin and Lee Bright. Fifteen years earlier, Peeler was one of only seven senators who voted against the flag's removal from the top of the South Carolina Capitol Dome and both chambers of the South Carolina Legislature to its present position on the capitol grounds, arguing that the flag's removal would only worsen race relations. The 2000 vote was a compromise between anti- and pro-flag forces in the wake of an economic boycott of the state.