Meghan O’Brien/South Dakota Searchlight
PIERRE — South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden announced legislation Friday that would increase the punishment for threats or violent acts that prevent people from practicing their religion.
The crime is currently a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year of county jail time, a $2,000 fine or both. The proposed legislation would change the crime to a felony and allow a judge to send someone to a state prison for two years, fine them $4,000 or both.
“If religious liberties fail, any other liberty eventually fails with it,” Rhoden said during a press conference. “If someone decides to target a house of worship, there will be real consequences.”
He was “troubled,” he said, by recent events at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement actions disrupted a church service. A pastor at the church works for ICE, which has had thousands of agents in Minnesota conducting enforcement actions for weeks, stirring controversy with events including the fatal shooting of an unarmed 37-year-old woman, Renee Good.
South Dakota House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach, a Republican from Spearfish, and Senate Majority Leader Jim Mehlhaff, a Republican from Pierre, are the prime sponsors of the bill.
Mehlhaff said it made him “angry” to watch as “out-of-state, professional agitators invaded the sanctuary of a church.”
“It’s not just shameful, in my opinion, it’s criminal,” Mehlhaff said. “This bill will send a message to these out-of-state agitators that if they come to South Dakota, they should plan to stay a while.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the St. Paul incident, and several people were arrested. There are federal laws against threats or violence that disrupt religious services.