A red state is plastering 'In God We Trust' on the walls of public schools. It's mandatory.
South Dakota's Republican lawmakers said it was about history - the motto appears on money, on license plates and in the fourth stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner. It's also likely discussed in the classroom, where historical inquiry is a key part of the state's social studies curriculum.
But legislators said they wanted to make it more clear; they wanted to "reaffirm" it. So this fall, when students return to school, a new and compulsory message will greet them: "In God We Trust." It'll be the first new academic year since South Dakota's GOP leadership passed a law requiring every public school to display the American maxim "in a prominent location" and in font no smaller than 12-by-12 inches.
"Our national motto and founding documents are the cornerstone of freedom and we should teach our children about these things," Sen. Phil Jensen, the controversial Rapid City politician who sponsored the bill, said at a hearing on the legislation.
South Dakota joins a growing list of states that force their schools to display the motto. At least half a dozen states passed "In God We Trust" bills last year, and another 10 have introduced or passed the legislation so far in 2019. Similar signage is going up in Kentucky schools this summer, and Missouri could be next.
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Jensen attracted attention nationally for his assertion in an interview with the Rapid City Journal that the free market, not government, should be allowed to decide whether or not racial discrimination is acceptable, and that his SB 128 introduced in 2013, which would allow discrimination by business owners, would serve to protect "the constitutional right to free association, the right to free speech and private property rights." (The bill failed, having drawn such reactions as fellow Republican State Senator Mark Kirkeby terming it "a mean, nasty, hateful, vindictive bill."
[7] Jensen's stance was repudiated by Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard, who issued a press release stating, "I found his comments to be completely out of line with South Dakota values. I don't agree with him and I haven't talked to anyone who does.[4] Jensen is uncertain about the assertion that he is South Dakota's most conservative politician, describing himself as simply a true Reagan conservative; but asserts that "too many" members of his own party are Republicans In Name Only.[8]