On February 25, defenders of South Dakota’s initiative process filed this reply brief in Dakotans for Health v Johnson, 25-2940. The issue is the petition deadline for initiatives, nine months before the general election. The deadline had been six months until the 2025 session of the legislature changed it to nine months. The U.S. District Court had struck down the nine-month deadline.

The brief is quite fierce, and says the state’s rationale, that the deadline is needed to allow time for litigation over the validity of the proposed initiative, is phony. The brief also outlines all the hostility the legislature has shown to the initiative process recently.