Laughing at this year's silly season of legislation
Rep. Dylan Jordan, R-Clear Lake, participates in a South Dakota House Education Committee on Jan. 22, 2025. Jordan sponsored a bill this year that would have repealed the state's seat belt law. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)f
In 2016 I was in my first year of covering the legislative session for the South Dakota Newspaper Association. During the course of my work there, I was struck by how good-humored legislators were as they went about making laws. I started to keep a place in the back of my notebook where I wrote down their quips and asides. Eventually that collection resulted in a decent feature story.
As I look back on that story, I see that one of the most frequent jokers was Lt. Gov. Matt Michels, who is once again in Pierre serving in Gov. Larry Rhoden's administration. Welcoming Pierre fifth-graders in the Senate gallery, Michels asked his colleagues, 'Are we smarter than a fifth grader?' Opening debate on a bill that would put South Dakota permanently on daylight saving time, Michels asked, 'Does anybody really know what time it is?'
Somehow that feature got dropped the next year, and the subsequent years I was in Pierre. Maybe I got lazy. Maybe lawmakers weren't funny anymore. Maybe they were sticking all their humor into the bills that they filed. There sure have been a few this year that have been worth a chuckle.
Mercifully killed in committee early in the session, House Bill 1065 would have repealed the state's seat belt law. Never mind the years of statistics that show that seat belts save lives. Never mind that if the state were to ever rescind the seat belt law, it stands to lose millions of dollars in federal highway funds.
None of that mattered to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Dylan Jordan, a Clear Lake Republican. In a story by The Dakota Scout, Jordan told the House Transportation Committee that the state's seat belt law was a matter of government overreach that took away his personal freedom.
Jordan's rationale was that South Dakotans would buckle up anyway. 'We don't need the government to tell us how to protect ourselves. We can do that on our own.'
That kind of logic could lead to more legislation that drops the age requirements for consuming alcohol. Thirsty 18-year-olds would probably recognize the need for public safety and refuse to consume any alcohol until they were 21.
It's not often when a piece of legislation angers so many people that it's withdrawn by the sponsor before it gets a hearing and causes the sponsor to lose the vice chairmanship of a committee in the process.
That's what happened to Rep. Phil Jensen when the Rapid City Republican sponsored HB 1224, a bill that called for defunding the Huron School District.
The bill didn't include any reason for the defunding, though Jensen said he had heard bad things about the school's bathroom policy for transgender students. It seems that the only way to bring the school district in line was to take away its state funding.
A bill that empowers people to file lawsuits against schools when students use the wrong bathroom is working its way through the Legislature. Jensen might still be vice-chairman of the House Education Committee if that bill had been filed before his. (Jensen, by the way, is on the House Transportation Committee and was one of two representatives to vote for abolishing the seat belt law.)
HB 1239 would have librarians face arrest and jail time if they allow youngsters to view material that's defined by state law as obscene or harmful to minors. According to at least one lawmaker on the House Education Committee, arrest is too good for them if they let kids see the naughty bits.
'If a librarian rented this out to my son or daughter, you'd be lucky if you got hauled out in handcuffs,' Rep. Travis Ismay, a Newell Republican, was quoted as saying in a South Dakota Searchlight story. 'So, yes, if they're breaking the law anyway, why would we have any problem with librarians getting hauled out of the library in handcuffs?'
'Librarians in handcuffs' sounds like the title of a book that Ismay wouldn't want his kids to read.
State law has a long legal definition of what's obscene. However, obscenity is too often in the eye of the beholder, leaving librarians open to accusations of providing improper material to minors for a whole range of books. If HB 1239 becomes law, it may be safer for librarians to insist that every child who checks out a book is accompanied by a parent.
Librarians have been fighting off book banning nationwide. Often those bans are aimed at books for young readers. While HB 1239 doesn't ban any books, it still puts a bullseye on librarians, making them the likely target of anyone who's disgruntled enough to want to make trouble in the name of protecting children.
There has to come a time when legislation isn't required for every facet of life. Lawmakers should leave highway safety, school bathroom policies and library check-out rules to the professionals in those fields. There used to be a time when Republicans were for smaller government and not nitpicking every decision made by someone else.
(By the way, Jensen is still on the House Education Committee. He was one of 10 committee members who voted in favor of HB 1239.)
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