A federal appeals court has blocked a South Dakota law that would have made it markedly harder to put a citizen initiative on the ballot. On Aug. 11, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a permanent injunction against House Bill 1184, which would have moved the deadline to file initiative petitions from May to February of an election year [1].
Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Raymond Gruender stated the holding in two sentences: "The district court held that the deadline violated the First Amendment and issued a permanent injunction. We affirm" [1]. The case is Dakotans for Health v. Monae Johnson, the challenge a ballot-measure group brought against the South Dakota secretary of state [1]. Judge James Loken dissented, arguing the majority's reasoning was at odds with Supreme Court precedent [1].
The practical weight of the law sits in the calendar. Moving the filing deadline from May to February pulls it roughly three months earlier, to about nine months before a November election [1]. A petition drive that once could gather signatures into the spring would instead have to finish in the depths of winter, the season when door-knocking and public signature-gathering are hardest. For a volunteer campaign working without paid circulators, three fewer months, and colder ones, is the difference between qualifying for the ballot and falling short.
Circulating an initiative petition is treated in constitutional law as core political speech, and the courts here concluded the February deadline burdened that speech without a strong enough justification to survive First Amendment review [1]. The district court reached that conclusion and issued the permanent injunction; the Eighth Circuit affirmed it [1]. Republicans in the legislature had passed the measure the prior year [1].
The injunction is not necessarily the last word. The South Dakota secretary of state could ask the Supreme Court to take the case, and Judge Loken's dissent sketches the argument a review might turn on [1]. For now, the February deadline does not take effect, and South Dakota's initiative campaigns keep the spring filing window they have long used to reach the ballot.
