With absentee voting set to begin September 18, a federal judge in South Dakota has agreed to fast-track a lawsuit challenging a new state law that requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — a requirement voting rights advocates say could strip thousands of Native American voters of a meaningful ballot just weeks before the midterms. U.S. District Judge Eric C. Schulte granted an expedited briefing schedule in the case, ordering the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office to respond by September 4 and giving plaintiffs until September 9 to reply, leaving barely more than a week before early voting starts to resolve whether the law can be enforced this election cycle.
What the New Law Requires
Senate Bill 175, enacted in March 2026, requires anyone registering to vote in South Dakota for the first time to present documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, tribal ID paired with additional documentation, or a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license. Voters who cannot produce qualifying documents are not turned away outright; instead they are registered as “federal-only voters,” a status that allows them to vote in presidential and congressional races but bars them from casting ballots in state and local contests, including races for governor, state legislature and county commission.
Who Is Suing and Why
The League of Women Voters of South Dakota and Sioux Falls voter Jaysen Hill filed suit on August 24 against Secretary of State Monae Johnson and the State Board of Elections, arguing the law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee by giving voters inadequate notice when a registration is rejected and no meaningful way to “cure” the problem before an election. The complaint also alleges the law conflicts with federal voter registration requirements that are supposed to make the registration process uniform and accessible.
Why Tribal Communities Are at the Center of the Fight
Attorneys for the League argue that Native American voters bear a disproportionate burden under the new documentation regime. Many tribal members hold tribal identification cards that do not, by themselves, satisfy the new citizenship-proof standard and must be paired with a separate government-issued document most reservation residents do not routinely carry. Because several of South Dakota’s reservations are in sparsely populated rural counties, voters who need to visit a county auditor’s office to sort out a registration problem can face round trips of more than 100 miles on unpaved roads — a logistical barrier plaintiffs say effectively disenfranchises voters who lack the time, vehicle, or gas money to make the trip before a registration deadline.
The State’s Position
South Dakota election officials have defended the law as a straightforward anti-fraud measure consistent with a broader wave of state-level proof-of-citizenship requirements adopted since 2025. Secretary of State Monae Johnson’s office has argued the federal-only voter classification is itself a safeguard, ensuring no eligible citizen is completely locked out of the ballot box even if a registration lacks full documentation, and that the law simply asks voters to demonstrate an eligibility requirement that already exists under both state and federal law.
A Broader Pattern Across the States
South Dakota’s fight is part of a wider legal battle playing out this election cycle as multiple states pass or expand documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements while the Trump administration separately pushes states to scrub voter rolls of noncitizens through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database. Voting rights groups say the combined effect of state-level documentation laws and federal roll-purge pressure has created a patchwork of new hurdles that fall hardest on rural, elderly, and tribal voters who often lack ready access to a birth certificate or passport.
What Happens Next
Judge Schulte is expected to rule on the League’s request for a preliminary injunction within days of the September 9 reply deadline, a decision that will determine whether South Dakota’s new documentation requirement can be enforced when absentee voting opens September 18. Whichever way the ruling goes, both sides have signaled they are prepared to appeal quickly, meaning the fight over who counts as a fully enfranchised voter in South Dakota could remain unresolved deep into the fall campaign.
