What South Dakota does have: solar easements

SDCL chapter 43-13 provides for solar easements — a mechanism by which one landowner grants another a right to unobstructed sunlight, with SDCL 43-13-17 providing that such an easement runs with the land and 43-13-18 setting out the required contents.

That is a voluntary instrument between neighbours. It is not a limit on what a covenant may say, and it does nothing for an owner whose declaration forbids panels.

The distinction matters because the two are easily conflated. A solar easement protects access to sunlight from being blocked. A solar access statute overrides a private restriction on installing panels. South Dakota has the first and not the second.

The one covenant override that does exist

SDCL 43-12-7, enacted in 2025, voids a covenant restricting the lawful possession, storage, transportation or discharge of firearms. Our piece on that section covers it in full.

It is the state's entire inventory. There is no equivalent for solar, flags, political signs, satellite dishes, clotheslines, EV charging, xeriscaping or assistance animals.

And nobody proposed one. A sweep of all 571 bills of the 2025 session and all 666 of the 2026 session found no bill proposing a solar-access, EV-charging, flag-display or political-sign override as applied to private covenants.

So what actually governs

The declaration, read as a contract, under the rules the Supreme Court restated in Spring Canyon Properties v. Cal SD: the same canons as contract interpretation, undefined terms given their plain and ordinary meaning from a dictionary rather than construed against the drafter, and the covenant's stated purposes used to resolve close questions.

That framework is not favourable to an owner arguing that a general architectural restriction should not reach solar panels. A covenant requiring committee approval for exterior modifications reaches them without naming them.

Two countervailing points are worth stating. Under Vivos xPoint v. Sindorf, a rule adopted under a reserved amendment power must be reasonable, made in good faith and equally enforced. And under Hood v. Straatmeyer, a restriction that has gone unenforced across a subdivision is vulnerable to cancellation entirely. Neither is a solar statute. Both are real constraints on selective enforcement.

Our solar rights page sets out the analysis, and EV charging covers the adjacent question, which sits in the same statutory vacuum.

Why the net metering point matters here

Because it changes the shape of the dispute. In a net metering state, an owner denied permission to install panels is being denied a quantifiable financial benefit, and that framing does work in negotiation and in legislatures. Without net metering, the economics of residential rooftop solar in South Dakota are weaker, and the pressure that produced solar access statutes elsewhere has been correspondingly lighter.

That is the most likely explanation for the legislative silence: not a considered decision to protect covenants, but an absence of the constituency that forces the question.

What to watch next

Nothing is pending at the PUC or in the legislature. The interconnection rules have not been touched since 2012. If this changes, the sequence will most likely run the other way from other states — a change in compensation policy first, then pressure on covenants once installation becomes economic.