Attorney General Marty Jackley tries really hard on public radio to sound like he’s not a fervent enemy of the First Amendment and citizen initiatives as he defends the state’s so-far unsuccessful attempt to defend its nine-month deadline for initiative petitions in court:
…[W]e do have a proud history in South Dakota of having the ability of the people to amend our constitution or put a statute into law, and we need to protect that.
The challenge with this is — and I feel for both sides of the issue — the one is, if there is a challenge to a ballot measure or a constitutional amendment, the courts and the lawyers need time to sort out that challenge. But the more time that you give them to do that is the less time that [Rick] Weiland and the petitioners have to pass around their petition.
So you need to find a balance. The legislature has worked on trying to find that balance. And right now, it’s set at nine months, but there’s a 2-1 decision that says nine months isn’t going to work.
I appreciate what he’s saying. I agree with the concept that this is important and that people get to speak, but we got to figure out the process on how to do it. And typically, we let the legislature decide that process.
And, you know, I was in the room when there were conversations going and it really is, We need to give them enough time to challenge it, but we need to give those petition circulators enough time to circulate it. And so we’ve got to strike a balance.
If nothing else, it would be nice to have the federal court, when it issues a decision such as this, to give us more direction [Attorney General Marty Jackley, in Lori Walsh, “Dispute over Signature Gathering Continues, Despite Victory for Citizens Who Say Legislature Violated First Amendment,” SDPB, 2026.08.17].
Marty, Marty, Marty—the federal court gave you exactly the direction you seek five years ago:
In order to remain proportional and account for the difficulties and speech restrictions that come with petition filing deadlines long before the election, the First Amendment requires a filing deadline no earlier than six months before the election. Thus, a ballot initiative petition filing deadline in May would be sufficient to pass Constitutional muster [emphasis mine; Judge Charles B. Kornmann, Memorandum Opinion and Order, SD Voice v. Noem, Case No. 19-CV-01017-CBK, United States District Court, District of South Dakota, Northern Division, 2021.08.30, p. 9].
Six months, Marty. Six months. The Legislature heeded that direction in 2023. Your fellow Republican Jon Hansen chose to ignore that direction in 2025 and gamble on another court fight with the patently unconstitutional nine-month deadline in 2025 House Bill 1184 that you’ve been unable to defend in District Court and on appeal.
Initiative advocate Rick Weiland, the man who took the nine-month deadline to court, reminds us that both courts have found the rest of Jackley’s gentle response about seeking balance to be bunk:
LORI WALSH: …[Jackley] talked about the timeframe to legally challenge the signature process.
Is there a balance? What is the right amount of time? Which is why he was saying that he is appealing to ask for the full panel at the 8th Circuit to take another crack at this.
RICK WEILAND: Well, both District Judge [Camela] Theeler and the appeals court, 8th Circuit, have both said that their reasons for wanting to do that are, first of all, false. The whole push behind getting that bill through the legislature was We don’t have time to litigate and something’s going to be on the ballot. That it shouldn’t get there if it didn’t get there using the right process. And, you know, in both courts decided, Oh, wait a minute. Even if you litigate up to the election, there’s always an appeals process, so you don’t resolve it before the election.
And so I just thought that was a ruse on their part. It’s pretty unreasonable to take three months off the table — especially February, March, and April.
November, December, and January are pretty tough times to collect signatures. So there’s no reason to do this other than to force a fumble in the process so that we don’t have the time to collect the signatures to qualify a measure.
That’s what’s driving this whole thing. And there’s the history that proves that out [Rick Weiland, in Walsh, 2026.08.17].
Quit while you’re behind, Marty. Take your two losses on the nine-month deadline and Judge Kornmann’s clear statement in 2021 back to your friends in the Legislature and tell them they can avoid any more constitutional trouble by setting the initiative petition deadline no earlier than six months before the election.