South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson applauds Gov. Kristi Noem before Noem delivered her 2023 budget address on the House floor of the Capitol building on Dec. 5, 2023. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
By: John Hult
PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson is now a defendant in a lawsuit over an abortion rights ballot measure, but the lawsuit is still unlikely to change the look of the Nov. 5 general election ballot.
If passed, the measure would reinstate legal abortion in spite of a state law that banned the procedure when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The ban has one exception to “preserve the life of the pregnant female.”
The anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund first challenged the legality of the signatures gathered to place the measure on the ballot earlier this summer. Minnehaha County Judge John Pekas dismissed the lawsuit because the group failed to name Johnson.
The lawsuit sought to remove the measure from the general election ballot, but only named the measure’s sponsor, Dakotans for Health, as a defendant. Only Johnson can do what Life Defense Fund wants, Pekas wrote in a July 17 opinion, so the case could not go forward.
The state Supreme Court sent the case back to Sioux Falls earlier this month, however, which gave Life Defense Fund the chance to amend its complaint and add Johnson.
On Friday, Pekas agreed to allow that, and also denied an effort to dismiss the case by Dakotans for Health. He inked a scheduling order that sets a trial date during the week of Sept. 23-27.
That’s after the Wednesday deadline for the secretary of state to certify copies of ballot questions to county auditors, but before the deadline for counties to publish facsimiles of the general election ballot in their legal newspapers. Those facsimiles must be published within two calendar weeks of the general election.
In its amended complaint, Life Defense Fund argues that if it wins, Johnson could issue a statement prior to the election instructing voters to disregard Amendment G, the abortion amendment.
Life Defense Fund argues that it has “mounds of evidence” that petitioners working on behalf of Dakotans for Health were “clearly breaking election law” as they gathered signatures for the measure.
Dakotans for Health has consistently argued that Life Defense Fund’s legal efforts are meant to stifle the right of South Dakotans to make the call on abortion rights in the state.
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