HB 1083+1084: Rhoden Proposes Hiding Some Public Officials’ Info, Busting You for Stalking If You Post His Address Online

I hate the security state.

Governor Larry Rhoden is proposing two bills that will make it impossible for citizens to determine if legislators actually reside in their districts.

House Bill 1084 would require that the addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of legislators, state officials, federal officials, judges, current or retired judges, and law enforcement officers in the voter registration files be withheld from the public. State law already conceals home addresses in the voter files for state judges; HB 1084 extends that protection to federal judges.

HB 1084 allows the release of the city and county where the protected officials reside. But in seven counties and 22 out of 35 Legislative districts, city and county are not enough to determine the Legislative district in which an individual resides.

I already daily encounter some journalistic grief when I write about the Legislature. Dakota Free Press style requires first citation of a legislator to include title and name followed in parentheses by party, district number, and hometown. See this morning’s post on Senate Bill 99:

Senator Jim Mehlhaff (R-24/Pierre) follows through on a proposal he made last fall and files Senate Bill 99, which would replace property taxes levied by K-12 school districts with an additional two percentage points of state sales tax.

Unlike his colleague John Carley (R-29/Piedmont), Senator Mehlhaff is not proposing to eliminate all property taxes… [CA Heidelberger, “SB 99: Mehlhaff Files Plan to Raise State Sales Tax to 6.2% to Replace Most School Property Tax,” Dakota Free Press, 2026.01.20].

It used to be that I could go right to the LRC’s Legislator Contacts page, click on profiles, and get legislators’ hometowns. But last summer the South Dakota Legislature freaked out over the assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and banned guns from the Capitol / restored permit requirements for carrying concealed weapons in public / declared gun violence a public health emergency erased legislator addresses from the LRC website. Now we only get district and counties encompassed therein. (And legislator mugshots are no longer public domain! (On top of that, we still have to ask permission to use legislator mugshots. Shouldn’t official photos of public officials be public domain? But I digress….)

When I report about legislators, I like to remind readers (and myself!) what town the legislators come from. When redistricting rolls around, I like to be able to look at where legislators and candidates live and see how the Legislature helped or hindered certain incumbents and challengers with gerrymandering. That particular issue, not to mention the basic question whether a individual actually lives within the district in which he or she seeks or holds office, are matters of public interest that can’t always be answered simply with city and county. HB 1084 makes it harder to address those matters of public interest.

Of course, one can always look for addresses elsewhere, like property tax records or candidate petitions and campaign finance filings (assuming for the latter two the candidate has not adopted a concealiatory post office box). But then House Bill 1083 steps in and modifies the definition of criminal stalking to include to “Knowingly disseminate, post, or publish, by electronic means, another person’s employment, home, or school address or location, or identifying information, as defined by § 22-40-9, without the other person’s consent, and with the intent to intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to the other person or the other person’s immediate family, as defined by § 22-1-2.” First offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor; any subsequent conviction within ten years of the first is a Class 6 felony.

That’s a broad protection for all people, but HB 1083 carves out special protection for the same public officials whose addresses HB 1084 will withhold from voter files released to the public:

Any person who violates § 22-19A-1 against a public official, with the intent to place the public official in reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury, or with the intent to cause the public official to reasonably fear for the public official’s safety, is guilty of the crime of felony stalking of a public official. Felony stalking of a public official is a Class 6 felony.

For the purposes of this section, “public official” means:

1. An elected official holding statewide office;
2. A federal or state legislator;
3. A federal or state judge or justice; or
4. A law enforcement officer as defined in § 22-1-2 [2026 House Bill 1083, Section 3, as filed 2026.01.16].

Now I suppose HB 1084 won’t immediately send me to the pen for posting articles showing legislators’ street addresses superimposed on maps of redrawn district boundaries to make the case for an independent redistricting commission. To get a jury to convict me of misdemeanor stalking, a legislator whose address I post would have to establish that I acted “with the intent to intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress”. To invoke HB 1083’s special protection for public officials, the legislator would have to go further and prove that I intended “to place the public official in reasonable fear of death or or great bodily injury, or… to cause the public official to reasonably fear for the public official’s safety.”

“Your Honor!” I can shout respond calmly from the stand. “I sought only to discuss matters of public interest. I posted addresses of lawmakers to demonstrate the biases and special interests that guide the redrawing of our electoral map.” But I worry that in the security state we’ve let grow out of control since Columbine and 9/11, my avowal of honest journalistic intent could easily be overwhelmed by the testimony of legislators who already feel harassed and substantially emotionally distressed by honest reporting of their constitutional ignorance, hypocrisy, unseriousness, and loathing of democracy (“Your Honor, I ask that my client be excused from the stand and that the jury be instructed to ignore his outburst…”) and the arguments their lawyers will make that I should know full well that posting a public official’s address online could expose that official to mortal danger. Do I gamble that I can convince a jury of my commitment to journalism, or do I write about gerrymandering only in the abstract?

If there is any merit to the Governor’s proposals to make it harder to get and criminal to publish online public officials’ addresses, both the voter roll redaction and the stalking charge contain gross inconsistencies.

1. HB 1083 and HB 1084 protect incumbents but not candidates who don’t currently hold office. If some nut might take potshots at Governor Rhoden for being a fascist sympathizer, might not that same nut also target Nazi apologist Toby Doeden, who’s running against Rhoden but holds no public office and thus whose address HB 1084 would leave available to crazed shooters perusing the voter rolls?
2. HB 1083 and HB 1084 apply only to some public officials. County election officials, city commissioners, and school board members get death threats, but HB 1083 and HB 1084 don’t protect them.
3. HB 1083 and HB 1084 offer no protection to public figures who never hold or run for public office but may still stir controversy, opposition, and violent threats. Why, Governor Rhoden, would you only protect officials like yourself with these address-non-disclosure laws and not political activists like, say, Pat Powers or Charlie Kirk?

If these bills are meant to discourage political assassinations or lesser harassment, shouldn’t they extend equal protection to all individuals—incumbents, challengers, activists, bloggers, campaign donors—whose participation in politics might draw violent responses? If Larry Rhoden’s home address ought to be a secret, shouldn’t everyone else’s?