Dana Hess writes for South Dakota Searchlight, an online news organization.

Under God, the people rule. The South Dakota state motto can be heard quite a bit during the legislative session. Former Gov. Kristi Noem liked to trot it out as a way of reminding lawmakers that they needed to be good stewards of their constituents’ tax dollars. Obviously that interpretation meant something else to Noem as she spent millions of those tax dollars to protect the Texas border.

The motto was used again by our new governor, Larry Rhoden, in his first address to a joint session of the Legislature. He said his new lieutenant governor, which turned out to be Rep. Tony Venhuizen, must recognize that “under God, the people rule.”

One of those rulers wants to make it a law that the state motto be in the face of public school students every day that they show up for class. House Bill 1105 would mandate that each public school classroom display the state motto in a prominent location. Its prime sponsor is Rep. Phil Jensen, the Rapid City Republican who was demoted from his vice chairmanship of the House Education Committee earlier this week for filing a bill to defund the Huron School District over a bathroom issue.

According to HB 1105: “The display of the state motto may take the form of a mounted plaque, student artwork, or any other form deemed appropriate by the administrator, provided that the text of the motto is easily readable and the motto is at least twelve inches wide by eight inches high.” While the form it takes is of no concern, it seems that when it comes to the state motto, size matters.

Jensen is also the House sponsor of Senate Bill 51, which calls for the classroom display of the Ten Commandments.

If both bills become law, classes that like to display student art may become cramped for wall space. Like the Blues Brothers, Jensen is on a mission from God.

It sure looks like his mission is to get God mentioned as many times as possible on the walls of public school classrooms. HB 1105 is scheduled for a hearing Friday. It will be interesting to hear the case that Jensen makes for how his bill serves to promote education in South Dakota. It’s hard to imagine that putting the motto bill into law would do anything more than help burnish Jensen’s credentials as a conservative.

HB 1105 has an additional provision, guaranteeing that anyone who gets sued because of the display of the state motto in public school classrooms — the school district, a district employee or the school board — will have their defense provided at no charge by the state’s attorney general. This same provision was included in 2019 when the Legislature mandated that the national motto —In God We Trust — be displayed in a high traffic area of each public school. It was also added as an amendment when the Senate narrowly approved the Ten Commandments bill on a vote of 18-17.

Too often, when endorsing legislation that may very well land the state in court, lawmakers act as if they have the attorney general on retainer. They never stop to think that any court case that results from the law they sponsored, and its promise of free legal representation, is paid for by taxpayers.

South Dakota’s public schools need help from legislators, but not in the form of more mandated mottos on the walls. Lawmakers should be putting their efforts into finding a way to come up with more than the paltry 1.25% increase in education funding in the budget that Noem offered. They should be seeking a way to get the state’s teacher salaries out of the bottom of national rankings. They should find a way to fight off the devastating budget cuts that have been proposed for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and the State Library.

When Jensen testifies about HB 1105, it will be interesting to hear how many of his constituents put aside their concerns about higher property taxes and their fear of the misuse of eminent domain to insist that the best use of his time in Pierre was to ensure that public schools have the state motto on their classroom walls.

In South Dakota, “Under God, the people rule.” Well, we’ll see about that.