Civil Rights · Sep 19, 2026Voting rights lawsuit prompts South Dakota to fix ‘confusing’ proof-of-citizenship system

Voting Rights · September 19, 2026

South Dakota changed how it notifies voters caught by its new proof-of-citizenship law, after a voting-rights lawsuit argued the state’s own system was too confusing for voters to know why their registration was rejected or how to fix it. A federal judge denied the plaintiffs’ request for emergency relief Friday — not because their concerns were wrong, but because the state had already made the fix they were asking for.

Key Facts

• South Dakota’s Senate Bill 175, signed into law March 26, 2026 by Gov. Larry Rhoden, requires new voter registrants to show documentary proof of citizenship — a birth certificate, passport, driver’s license issued after July 1, 2025, tribal ID, or a photocopy of a passport or birth certificate.^[1]
• The bill passed the state Senate 28–6 and the state House 64–3 before being signed.^[1]
• Voters who don’t provide it become “federal-only voters”: eligible to vote in federal races but locked out of state and local contests.^[2]
• Nationally, more than 20 million U.S. citizens of voting age lack ready access to citizenship documents, and nearly half of Americans don’t hold a passport — the same category of paperwork burden at the center of this case.^[5]

The Story So Far

SB 175 itself isn’t what the lawsuit challenges — the plaintiffs, the League of Women Voters of South Dakota and voter Jaysen Hill, aren’t arguing South Dakota can’t require proof of citizenship. What they challenged was implementation: the Secretary of State’s guidance required original documents presented in person for driver’s licenses, tribal IDs, and state IDs, even though the statute itself allows photocopies. In a rural state where county offices can sit more than 100 miles from a voter’s home and mail registration is common, that in-person, originals-only requirement functions as a much bigger barrier than the law on paper suggests.^[2]

The suit, filed in August and argued by the ACLU Voting Rights Project, ACLU of South Dakota, and the Campaign Legal Center, also targeted the rejection notices themselves: voters who didn’t qualify were told to submit “a brand new registration application” rather than being given a way to simply correct the missing document, with notices the plaintiffs said gave inaccurate information about what was actually required.^[2]

South Dakota is not alone in this: it’s one of at least 12 states with some form of documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration, alongside Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming.^[6] The state’s own voter-registration guidance — the same page the lawsuit says confused voters — is published directly by the Secretary of State’s office.^[7]

What Changed, and What the Ruling Actually Said

During the litigation, South Dakota revised its voter notices. That was enough for the court: the judge found the request for emergency relief moot because the state had already implemented most of what the plaintiffs had asked for, not because the underlying claims about photocopies and rejection notices were resolved on the merits.^[4]

Voters who do not provide qualifying documentation can be classified as “federal-only voters,” meaning they may still vote in federal races but not state or local contests.

— from the ACLU’s own case summary^[2]

The lawsuit separately argues that refusing to accept photocopies of tribal and state IDs — while the statute itself permits photocopies — violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act, a claim the September ruling did not resolve and that remains pending.^[2]

The Bigger Pattern: Watch

South Dakota’s law is a state-level version of a fight playing out in Congress over the federal SAVE Act, which would impose a similar documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement nationwide. This PBS News Hour segment on the Supreme Court’s April ruling narrowing federal voting-rights protections — the same ruling driving states in both directions this year, some expanding voter protections and some tightening documentation rules — is useful context for why 2026 has produced so much state-level voting litigation at once.^[3]

What’s Disputed or Unconfirmed

South Dakota has not published data on how many registrants have actually been classified as “federal-only voters” under SB 175, so the real-world scale of the problem the plaintiffs describe is not yet publicly quantified. Separately, the state has defended the documentation requirement itself as a fraud-prevention measure, while national voting-rights researchers cited in NPR’s reporting on the similar federal SAVE Act say documented cases of noncitizen voting are extremely rare^[5] — the two claims aren’t reconciled in any source reviewed for this piece, and numbers on actual fraud incidence in South Dakota specifically were not available.

How to Verify This Yourself

• The bill text itself, on the South Dakota Legislature’s own site: sdlegislature.gov.
• The ACLU’s own case page, with filings: aclu.org.
• Democracy Docket’s ongoing coverage: democracydocket.com.
• South Dakota’s own voter-registration guidance, the page at the center of the notice dispute: sdsos.gov.^[7]
• Ballotpedia’s tracker of every state with a proof-of-citizenship law, for the comparison above: ballotpedia.org.^[6]
• Dakota Free Press’s original coverage of the filing, with the complaint itself linked: dakotafreepress.com.^[8]

What You Can Do Right Now

• If you’re registering to vote in South Dakota for the first time, confirm exactly which documents your county auditor’s office will accept before you go — the case shows the state’s own guidance and statute weren’t consistent with each other.
• If you’ve been notified you’re a “federal-only voter” anywhere in the country, contact the League of Women Voters or the ACLU chapter in your state; this suit exists because plaintiffs came forward with exactly that experience.
• Check now whether you have a passport, birth certificate, or other qualifying document on hand — with roughly half of Americans lacking a passport, this is a real gap for many voters, not a hypothetical one.

Kemetic Minds Analysis

The most telling detail here isn’t the lawsuit. It’s that South Dakota changed its notices without waiting for a court order. In practice, that’s the state admitting its original system was confusing enough to be a real problem — even while it keeps defending the underlying law in court.

Watch the two claims the September ruling left untouched: the photocopy rule and the Civil Rights Act argument. That’s the part of this case that could set real precedent, since it asks how much paperwork friction a state can build in before a citizenship check starts working like suppression instead of security. The 100-mile detail matters too. A rule that’s reasonable near a county office can be a real barrier three counties away, and SB 175 treats both the same. Given how lopsided the vote was — 28–6 in the Senate, 64–3 in the House — this law faced little pushback in the legislature itself; the pushback came later, from voters who actually had to use it.

References

1. South Dakota Legislature. (2026). 2026 Senate Bill 175 [Primary, bill text]. sdlegislature.gov. ↩
2. American Civil Liberties Union. (2026). League of Women Voters of South Dakota v. Johnson [Primary, case page]. aclu.org. ↩
3. PBS NewsHour. (2026, April 29). How the Supreme Court’s Louisiana districting decision weakens the Voting Rights Act [Secondary]. pbs.org/newshour. ↩
4. Democracy Docket. (2026, September 19). Voting rights lawsuit prompts South Dakota to fix ‘confusing’ proof-of-citizenship system [Primary]. democracydocket.com. ↩
5. NPR. (2026, February 19). A Republican plan to overhaul voting is back. Here’s what’s new in the bill [Secondary]. npr.org. ↩
6. Ballotpedia. (2026). Proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration by state [Tertiary, nonpartisan reference tracker]. ballotpedia.org. ↩
7. South Dakota Secretary of State. (2026). Register to Vote [Primary, agency guidance page]. sdsos.gov. ↩
8. Dakota Free Press. (2026, August 26). League of Women Voters, ACLU Sue over SD’s Enforcement of Voter Proof of Citizenship Law [Secondary]. dakotafreepress.com.

Related Reading

• Kemetic Minds: Four states enact voting rights acts in one year — the expansion side of this same story.

Investigative methodology: every quote and figure above is drawn verbatim from the cited primary sources — the bill text itself, the ACLU’s own case filing summary, Democracy Docket’s reporting, and NPR’s SAVE Act coverage for the national documentation-burden statistics. The “Kemetic Minds Analysis” section above is this newsroom’s own interpretation, clearly separated from the sourced reporting it follows.