Court Opinion

ID: 9535868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:45:49.983391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:22.238616
License: Public Domain

*58HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court’s ruling which denied the writ of prohibition.
Simply stated, this appeal is fostered from a dispute involving statutory construction.
There are four legal avenues by which an attendance center can be discontinued in the State of South Dakota:
(1) By resolution of the school board pursuant to SDCL 13-23-1;
(2) By direction of the electorate pursuant to SDCL 13-23-2;
(3) By the school board’s discretionary act in referring the question to the electorate; and
(4) By the affirmative act of the electorate in referring the resolution after its passage by the school board.
As I interpret these statutes, it is only with respect to the third and fourth avenues that a deadline exists. The statutes appear to be clear in their meaning that meeting the deadline is the obligation of the party seeking the referendum.
Further, I interpret these statutes to mean that the legislature intended that a school board need not refer its decision to discontinue an attendance center to the electorate, but if it chooses to do so, its resolution must be passed prior to March 1 of the calendar year in which it is to take effect.
The Sioux Falls School Board acted solely by resolution under SDCL 13-23-1. No time limitation applies to this statute. The South Dakota Legislature saw fit to grant unto the school districts of this state the broad discretionary authority stated in SDCL 13-23-1. SDCL 13-23-1 is consistent with SDCL 13-8-39, the latter providing the school board with general charge and control of the operation of the school district. I do not believe that the courts should engraft a time limitation obligation upon the Sioux Falls School Board when such a time limitation is not provided for in SDCL 13-23-1.
I do not question that the matter of referendum, as it pertains to the closing of attendance centers, is subject to legislatively imposed deadlines; however, cardinal is the initial grant of authority to the school board which is not subject to a chronometric deadline.
In Knodel Common Sch. Dist. No. 58 v. County Bd. of Ed., 82 S.D. 185, 191, 144 N.W.2d 38, 42 (1966) (emphasis supplied), this Court stated:
It is a familiar rule where there is in the same statute a particular enactment and also a general one, which in its most comprehensive sense would include what is embraced in the former, the particular enactment must be operative, and the general enactment must be taken to affect only such cases as are not within the provisions of a particular enactment.
This rule should be applied to the case at Bar. The deadline provision of SDCL 13-23-3 is the particular enactment which, by its terms, applies only to that situation in which the board precipitates a referendum vote of the electorate.