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DUI law in South Dakota
The criminal charge and your driving privileges are separate questions. Check both.
DUI law in South Dakota concerns both the criminal charge and the right to drive. The applicable licence process depends on the alleged conduct, test result or refusal, and the notice or court order. A criminal court date is not a substitute for checking a separate licence deadline. The cited rules below identify what has been verified for this jurisdiction.
The two legal questions
The criminal charge and driving privileges can involve different proceedings. The notice, order and cited rule identify the applicable process.
Driving privileges
The licence case
- Forum
- The agency or court identified by the applicable licence proceeding
- Clock
- Check the applicable notice or order for the deadline and its starting event
- Deadline to request a hearing
- The deadline depends on why your license is being taken away.
- DPS notice: If your notice cites §32-12-49 or §32-12-49.4, your written hearing request must be postmarked—or received by fax—within 15 days after the date on the notice. Send the request to the South Dakota Department of Public Safety (DPS).
- Under-21 test refusal: If your license is being revoked because you refused a test after an arrest under South Dakota’s under-21 driving law, you have 120 days from the arrest to request a hearing.
- The 120-day deadline is only for that under-21 refusal process. It does not replace the 15-day deadline for the notices described above.
- Requesting a hearing does not, by itself, establish that you may keep driving. These license hearings are separate from your criminal case.
- Suspension under the cited rule
- Not published yet. We show a figure only once it has been confirmed against the official source and dated.
- Hearing procedure under the cited rule
- The hearing process depends on the type of license action.
- DPS notice: For a notice citing §32-12-49 or §32-12-49.4, send a written hearing request to the South Dakota Department of Public Safety. A mailed request must be postmarked, or a faxed request received, within 15 days after the date on the notice. DPS then issues a hearing notice.
- Under-21 test refusal: If your license is being revoked for refusing a test after an arrest under South Dakota’s under-21 driving law, request a hearing within 120 days from the arrest. This is an administrative license hearing, separate from the criminal case.
- The mail-and-fax instructions above apply to the DPS notices described above. This answer does not assume that they also govern the separate under-21 process, or that an email or phone call is enough.
- A hearing request is not permission to drive. A criminal court date is not a substitute for the license-hearing process.
Criminal charge
The criminal case
- Forum
- A criminal court
- Clock
- Check court notices and orders; no case duration is predicted here
- Alcohol-concentration threshold
- 0.08% or more by weight of alcohol in blood while driving or in actual physical control of a vehicle.
- The statute specifies chemical analysis of breath, blood or another bodily substance. It separately prohibits driving under the influence; the numeric threshold is not permission to drive while impaired.
- This is the general alcohol-concentration rule, not a separate rule for commercial drivers or drivers under 21.
- First-offense penalty rule
- Not published yet. We show a figure only once it has been confirmed against the official source and dated.The cited rule may describe a range or a minimum with conditions, not a predicted sentence.
- Lookback period
- Not published yet. We show a figure only once it has been confirmed against the official source and dated.
Alcohol-concentration thresholds in South Dakota
The cited provision controls the threshold’s scope. Underage and commercial rules can concern licensing as well as criminal liability; they are not all the same offense.
- Standard drivers
- 0.08% or more by weight of alcohol in blood while driving or in actual physical control of a vehicle.
- The statute specifies chemical analysis of breath, blood or another bodily substance. It separately prohibits driving under the influence; the numeric threshold is not permission to drive while impaired.
- This is the general alcohol-concentration rule, not a separate rule for commercial drivers or drivers under 21.
- Operating a commercial motor vehicle
- Not published yet. We show a figure only once it has been confirmed against the official source and dated.
- Under-21 rule
- Not published yet. We show a figure only once it has been confirmed against the official source and dated.
South Dakota in detail
License suspensionThe administrative deadline to request a hearing, what happens if it passes, and how the licence case runs beside the criminal one.PenaltiesStatutory ranges by offense number, lookback-period aware — fines, jail, suspension length, interlock.Implied consent and refusalWhat refusing a test does to the licence case and to the criminal case.
8 further South Dakota topics — interlock, hardship licences, drug DUI, felony DUI, underage, commercial drivers, checkpoints and record relief — are part of the approved taxonomy and are not built yet.