The Republican war on initiative and referendum kicks off this Session with House Bill 1087, in which rookie Representative Travis Ismay (R-28B/Vale) invites yet another court challenge by proposing to ban paid petition circulators.
Ismay and his co-sponsors—all Republicans—are peddling a ban on paid circulators that South Dakota Republicans have floated for over a decade. HB 1087 proposes the same ban as Ismay tried and failed to pass in last year’s HB 1267. Like last year’s bill, HB 1087 applies only to circulators of ballot question petitions, not candidate petitions, revealing that Republicans’ true concern is not to clamp down on alleged petition fraud but simply to raise more obstacles to citizens’ exercise of direct democracy. Like last year’s bill (as amended by House Judiciary following a smokeout before failure on the House floor), HB 1087 imposes no explicit penalty on the paid circulator but voids the entire petition if a court finds a single signature collected by a paid circulator.
And like last year’s bill, HB 1087 violates standing case law:
While South Dakota’s current ban on paying circulators per signature has substantial support in case law, 2025 HB 1267’s blanket ban on any form of compensation for circulators ignores the standing precedent of Meyer v. Grant, in which the United States Supreme Court found that “[t]he statutory prohibition against the use of paid circulators abridges [ballot measure sponsors’] right to engage in political speech in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 414 (1988) [Cory Heidelberger, Teagan McNary, and Reynold Nesiba, “Have Recent Legislative Changes in South Dakota Made Using the Initiated Measure Process More Difficult?” South Dakota Law Review, vol. 70, iss. 3, footnote 210, posted online 2025.06.17; journal citation 70 S.D. L. Rev. 520 (2025); DOI: https://doi.org/10.70657/SDLR.V70.I3.520].
Meyer v. Grant (1988) predates Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which underscored the problematic but binding idea that money is speech. Citizens United played a role in both cases the state lost in previous efforts to restrict the activity of petition circulators (as well as a case the state lost when the court rejected an initiated ban on out-of-state contributions to ballot question committees) quash initiative and referendum). Citizens United, Meyer v. Grant, and other cases say South Dakota can’t even make paid circulators register and wear badges; those precedents say even more loudly that Ismay’s can’t ban paid circulators.
Paid petition circulators enjoy the same First Amendment rights as volunteer circulators. HB 1087 will fail judicial review. House Judiciary or whoever draws this bad bill should reject it immediately to spare South Dakota another embarrassing loss in court over unconstitutional restrictions on the people’s right to initiative and referendum.