The ACLU of South Dakota's Communications Director would love to speak with you. Janna Farley handles queries from reporters on local, state, and national civil liberties issues. ACLU of South Dakota team members can provide information and assist journalists by lending important perspectives on issues such as LGBTQ advocacy, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, and more. Contact Janna directly at jfarley@aclu.org.
With serious issues like education funding, workforce housing, childcare, criminal justice reform, and tenuous state-tribal relations, it’s disturbing that some legislators keep coming back to the same discriminatory issues year after year.
Whether you’re for a specific bill or against it, there’s plenty of work to do, calls to make, letters to write, legislative coffees and cracker barrels to attend.
Instead of encouraging learning, Gov. Noem’s proposed legislation effectively gags educators and students from talking about issues of the most profound national importance, such as the impact of systemic racism and sexism in our society.
Gov. Noem's draft legislation violates both the United States Constitution and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which protects all students – including those who are transgender – from discrimination based on sex.
The removal of recommended OSEU and Native American topics from the content standards deprives students of their right to receive information and ideas and racially discriminates or has the effect of racially discriminating against Native Americans in South Dakota.
Black people make up just 2 percent of the state’s population, but comprise 8 percent of the South Dakota prison population.