South Dakota Attorney General Opinions
Free plain-English summaries of attorney general opinions issued in South Dakota, with full citations and the original source on every page.
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Under South Dakota's 2025 HB 1130, do counties, cities, and school districts have to hold their elections on a single combined ballot, or can each level run its own ballot on the same day?
They can run separate ballots. HB 1130 only requires the elections to happen on the same date (June primary or November general), not that they share one ballot. 'In conjunction with' is about timing;…
South Dakota's new election law (HB 1062) tells the Secretary of State to post the statewide voter registration file online weekly, but another statute says voter registration info can't be put on the internet with unrestricted access. Do those statutes contradict each other?
No. The Secretary of State can satisfy both by posting the file behind a request-form gate: anyone can ask for access by submitting contact info and acknowledging the use restrictions, then gets a one…
What does South Dakota's video lottery operator law actually require for 'residency'? And does the partnership/corporation majority-ownership rule apply to LLCs and limited partnerships too?
The South Dakota Lottery has to satisfy itself, with whatever investigation is needed, that an applicant actually lives in South Dakota as their permanent home. And the majority-South-Dakota-resident-…
Can a South Dakota State's Attorney who is now a full-time county employee still do private legal work on the side, as long as it's not in state court?
Yes. SDCL 7-16-19 only bars a full-time state's attorney from representing private clients in cases pending in South Dakota state courts. Other private practice (transactional work, federal court matt…
If you want to pull a piece of land out of a South Dakota sanitary district, how many petition signatures do you need? Is it 20% of all voters in the district, or 20% of votes cast for the top trustee at the last election?
It is 20% of the votes cast for the top vote-getter at the last annual trustee election, not 20% of all district voters. So in a small new district where the leading trustee got 40 votes, an exclusion…
If a person moves to South Dakota for a 12-month contract job but keeps voting and paying taxes in their home state, can they get a South Dakota concealed pistol permit after 30 days?
No. The AG concluded that the 30-day county-or-municipal residency requirement in SDCL 23-7-7.1 required actual residency, not just temporary physical presence. A contract worker who kept voting regis…
If an official court reporter lived in one South Dakota city but had to travel to a different city where the presiding judge held court, did the reporter qualify for mileage and meal reimbursement under the 1965 court reporter expense statute, or did 'residence' in the statute mean the residence of the court rather than the reporter?
Yes, the reporter qualified for reimbursement. The AG read 'residence' as the reporter's personal residence, following the South Dakota Supreme Court's definition of residence as 'personal presence in…
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Attorney general opinions in South Dakota are written by the South Dakota Attorney General's office in response to questions from state agencies, legislators, and prosecutors. They are not binding like court decisions, but courts and agencies treat them as persuasive guidance on how state law applies. Every opinion above has a plain-English question and short answer, plus a link to the full original text.