Uncompromising sponsor sees parent-rights bill die
Instead, the first-year lawmaker could only watch on Wednesday as the South Dakota House of Representatives debated whether to kill her Senate Bill 113 that would protect parents' rights to raise their children as they see fit.
Grove stook in the back of the House chamber and later paced the legislators-only hallway as one after another representative stood to speak.
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She had refused to accept a House version that added a sentence saying state laws on child abuse and juvenile courts would still apply, regardless of the rest of her bill's content.
The House sentence specifically said, 'No person may use this section to challenge a proceeding under chapters 26-7A or 26-8A.'
Grove found that sentence unacceptable.
The stand-off led to the appointment of a conference committee. Its members on Wednesday morning recommended 5-1 removing the sentence added by the House and returning the bill to the Senate version.
When the House considered whether to accept the conference report on Wednesday afternoon, Republican Rep. Tim Reisch called for the bill's rejection.
'It's very troubling that the bill's sponsor doesn't want to include a simple sentence of clarification that our laws against child abuse and neglect are not to be impacted by this,' Reisch said.
A former Miner County sheriff and a former state secretary of corrections, Reisch had called for the addition of the sentence when SB 113 came through the House the first time. The vote on the amendment that day was 37-32.
On Wednesday, Reisch cast the nay during the conference vote.
The hour-long debate among House members that followed saw several opponents of the bill deliver emotional speeches about their experiences in law enforcement and the Department of Social Services, interspersed by comments from supporters such as Republican Rep. Travis Ismay, who was a foster parent for seven years.
'The system is broke. Parents need to have parental rights and have it in law like this,' Ismay said.
In the end, the House followed Reisch's lead and voted 39-31 for a double-barreled motion to not accept the conference committee's report and to not appoint a new committee.
And with that, SB 113 was dead.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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