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DAKOTA CONSTITUTION Acknowledgment of God Preamble.
We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for
our civil and religious liberties, in order to form a more perfect and independent
government, establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and preserve to ourselves and to our posterity the
blessings of liberty, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the State
of South Dakota.
Religion Clauses Article
VI, section 3. The right to worship God according to the dictates
of conscience shall never be infringed. No person shall be denied any civil or
political right, privilege, or position on account of his religious opinions;
but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse
licentiousness, the invasion of the rights of others, or justify practices inconsistent
with the peace or safety of the state. No person shall be compelled to attend
or support any ministry or place of worship against his consent nor shall any
preference be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship.
No money or property of the state shall be given or appropriated for the benefit
of any sectarian or religious society or institution.
Education
Article VIII, section 16. No appropriation
of lands, money, or other property or credits to aid any sectarian school shall
ever be made by the state, or any county or municipality within the state, nor
shall the state or any county or municipality within the state accept any grant,
conveyance, gift, or bequest of lands, money, or other property to be used for
sectarian purposes, and no sectarian instruction shall be allowed in any school
or institution aided or supported by the state.
Article VIII,
section 20. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 3, Article
VI and section 16, Article VIII, the Legislature may authorize the loaning of
nonsectarian textbooks to all children of school age.
Finance/Property
Tax Article XI, section 6. The Legislature shall,
by general law, exempt from taxation, property used exclusively for agricultural
and horticultural societies, for school, religious, cemetery, and charitable purposes,
property acquired and used exclusively for public highway purposes, and personal
property to any amount not exceeding in value two hundred dollars for each individual
liable to taxation.
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