A service animal is now a dog — in one half of South Dakota law
A service animal is now a dog — in one half of South Dakota law
2026-09-19 · South Dakota · Legislation
South Dakota now carries two different definitions of a service animal, and which one applies depends on where you are standing.
Two bills passed the 2026 session unanimously. SB 81, clarifying the prohibition on injuring or harassing a service animal, amended SDCL 40-1-38. SB 82 created a new section in SDCL chapter 22-35 making misrepresentation a crime. Both passed the Senate 34-0 and the House 66-0, were signed March 9, 2026, and took effect July 1, 2026.1
The definition they carry
Identical in both acts:
“For purposes of this section, ‘service animal’ means a dog that is trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, as set forth in 28 C.F.R. § 36.104 (January 1, 2026), provided the work or tasks performed by the dog are directly related to the individual's disability. The crime deterrent effects of a dog's presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.”
A dog. Trained. And emotional support expressly excluded from what counts as work.
And the new offence
SB 82's section:
“An individual may not, directly or indirectly through statements or conduct, intentionally misrepresent an animal in that individual's possession as a service animal in any place of public accommodation to obtain any rights or privileges available to an individual who qualifies for a service animal under state or federal law, knowing that the individual is not entitled to those rights or privileges. A violation of this section is a Class 2 misdemeanor.”
The five words that decide the scope
“in any place of public accommodation.”
SB 82 operates in public accommodations. SB 81 sits in the animal cruelty title. Neither amends SDCL 43-32-33 to 43-32-36, which is South Dakota's assistance-animal-in-housing chapter, and neither touches the federal Fair Housing Act, which is what actually governs an association's response to an accommodation request.
So the state's two definitions now read against each other. In a place of public accommodation, a service animal is a trained dog and emotional support is not work. In the housing chapter, SDCL 43-32-33 still provides that the term “refers to any animal that serves a role for an individual with a disability as an emotional support animal, any therapy animal, or any assistance animal.”
The same legislature, in the same session, narrowed one and declined to touch the other. The housing-side bill that would have changed it — HB 1231 — deadlocked 6-6 in committee and was tabled.
A misreading these acts invite
These two acts are going to be read as authority to refuse an emotional support animal in a community. They are not that, and the reasons are structural rather than technical.
A residential community is generally not a place of public accommodation. An owner's dwelling is housing, and housing is governed by the Fair Housing Act and, for landlord-tenant relationships, by SDCL chapter 43-32. SB 82's offence has no application to a covenant dispute between an association and a member.
The misrepresentation offence also has a demanding mental element: the individual must intentionally misrepresent, knowing they are not entitled. That is not a standard an association is positioned to apply, and it is enforced by prosecutors rather than by boards.
Our pet restrictions page covers the actual framework for a covenant.
Where the common areas complicate it
There is a genuine grey zone, and it is worth naming rather than smoothing over. Association amenities are usually not public accommodations, because they serve members rather than the public. But a clubhouse rented to outside groups, a pool open to the public, or a community facility used for public events can look different. Nothing in either act addresses that boundary, and no South Dakota decision has drawn it.
The federal layer moved the same way, on the enforcement side
The narrowing in SB 81 and SB 82 tracks what HUD did in 2026 without either being aware of the other. HUD withdrew its 2020 assistance-animal notice and, in a May 2026 memorandum, limited reasonable-cause findings to animals “trained to provide disability-related assistance,” adopting the ADA's training component — while keeping the Fair Housing Act's broader species reach. Our piece on that shift covers it.
So the practical position in South Dakota as of this autumn: a narrowed service-animal definition in public accommodations, a federal enforcement standard that has narrowed to trained animals, an unchanged state housing chapter that expressly includes emotional support animals, and a Fair Housing Act whose text has not moved at all. Those are four different instruments pointing in three directions.
What to watch next
Whether the 2027 session returns to the housing chapter. The pattern from this year — unanimous passage on the public-accommodation side, a 6-6 tie on the housing side — suggests the difficulty is specific to housing rather than to the underlying policy, and a bill that reconciled SDCL 43-32-33 with the definition now in SDCL 40-1-38 would be the obvious next draft.
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