South Dakota

The pathways, as the board describes them

Licensure by endorsement. The permanent route for a nurse licensed in another jurisdiction, stated in a single rule: "Upon filing, on the form prescribed by the board, an application supported by written evidence satisfactory to the board showing that the applicant is licensed to practice nursing in accordance with the laws of another state or territory or foreign country, the applicant may be issued a license by endorsement to practice nursing in this state without examination." The rule states what must accompany the application: "The application shall be filed with the fee prescribed by chapter 20:48:06 and evidence of employment status according to provisions in SDCL 36-9-1, 36-9-32, and 36-9-39." Its own effective-date history runs "Source: SL 1975, ch 16, § 1; 3 SDR 35, effective November 11, 1976; 12 SDR 151, 12 SDR 155, effective July 1, 1986; 13 SDR 49, effective October 27, 1986; 33 SDR 43, effective September 12, 2006."

The temporary permit. A second route, and the one that matters most to a nurse with a start date — quoted in full in section 02. The rules make it available to a nurse who "has applied for and is awaiting licensure by endorsement from the board".

The multistate privilege. No rule captured here states a multistate licensing privilege as an available route. The chapter that once did is repealed, as quoted in the docket. The phrase "privilege to practice" does appear in two current rules, quoted in the docket, but neither states who holds such a privilege or on what terms.

What the rules do not decide here. The rule on an "Applicant from another state, territory, or foreign country" governs a different question — qualifying for "license by examination" on the basis of a diploma from elsewhere — and states that such an applicant "may qualify for license by examination if the board determines that the requirements for granting a diploma from that nursing school are substantially the same as the requirements of schools in this state." Which pathway applies to any particular nurse is for the board to determine.

The published process

Practice while the application is pending. South Dakota publishes a real one, and the rule names endorsement applicants explicitly. The applicant "must apply on the form prescribed by the board" and "must also be eligible to take the National Council Licensing Examination in this or any other state or territory of the United States or has applied for and is awaiting licensure by endorsement from the board." The permit carries a required title: "The holder of a temporary permit must use the title, registered nurse applicant (R.N. App.) or licensed practical nurse applicant (L.P.N. App.), whichever pertains." It ends on a denial: "If the holder is notified by the board that licensure by endorsement or examination has been denied to the holder, the permit is invalid on the date the notice is received by the holder, and the holder must immediately return the permit to the board." One supervision condition falls on practical nurses specifically: "The applicant awaiting license by examination and the applicant awaiting license by endorsement as a licensed practical nurse may practice only under the supervision of a licensed registered nurse on duty in the area where the holder of the permit is working." Read the expiry rule precisely — the stated 90-day limit is written for the examination applicant, not the endorsement applicant: "Beginning February 16, 1994, the temporary permit issued to the applicant awaiting licensure by examination becomes invalid upon notice to the applicant of the results of the first examination or 90 days following the date of issuance, whichever is earlier." No duration for a permit issued to an applicant awaiting endorsement is stated in the rules reviewed. Searched for this row: chapters 20:48:03, 20:48:06 and 20:48:15 of the administrative rules, and the board's own About and Contact Us pages, which are the only pages of the board's site its robots.txt leaves open to an automated reader.

Verification of the existing license. No national verification system is named in the rules reviewed — the words Nursys and NCSBN appear nowhere in them. What the endorsement rule requires instead is evidence to the board's own satisfaction: "an application supported by written evidence satisfactory to the board showing that the applicant is licensed to practice nursing in accordance with the laws of another state or territory or foreign country". The form on which that evidence arrives is "the form prescribed by the board", and the board's forms are published on pages this page could not read. That absence is a fact about what the rules state and about what could be captured, not a statement that the board publishes no verification route.

Fingerprints and the background check. The rules address this directly and apply it to endorsement applicants by name: "Each applicant for licensure by endorsement must submit a set of fingerprints on a standard card provided by the board for the purpose of obtaining a state and federal criminal background check through the Division of Criminal Investigation." An accompanying document is required: "An authorization and release form must be signed by the applicant authorizing the release of the criminal history record to the board." And the timing is stated: "The fingerprint card, authorization and release form, and fee must accompany the application for licensure." The temporary-permit rule imposes the same requirement separately and adds a gate that matters to anyone counting on the permit: "A permanent license may not be issued until the criminal background check is complete."

The three rows above answer the questions an experienced adviser raises first, from the state's own published rules, or record that a question is not answered in them.

Fees, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none totaled. From chapter 20:48:06 of the Administrative Rules of South Dakota, "FEES REQUIRED OF LICENSEES", retrieved Aug 31, 2026. Every amount is published as words rather than figures and is quoted that way here.

Registered nurse. "For a registered nurse license by endorsement, one hundred dollars" — "For a temporary permit as an R.N. App., twenty-five dollars" — "For the endorsement of a registered nurse license to another state, territory, or country, twenty-five dollars".

Licensed practical nurse. "For a licensed practice nurse license by endorsement, one hundred dollars" — reproduced as published, including the state's own "practice" where "practical" is used throughout the rest of the rule — with "For a temporary permit, twenty-five dollars" and "For the endorsement of a licensed practical nurse license to another state, territory, or country, twenty-five dollars".

Renewal, once licensed. Both rules state it identically: "For the biennial renewal of a license, ninety-five dollars, plus ten dollars to fund the nurses' education assistance scholarship program, pursuant to SDCL 36-9-77, and ten dollars to fund the nursing workforce center, pursuant to SDCL 36-9-95".

Other amounts an endorsement applicant may meet. "For changing a name on the records of a license, ten dollars" — "For issuing a duplicate of the original license, twenty dollars" — "For placing a registered nurse license on inactive status, ten dollars" — "For the reinstatement of a registered nurse lapsed license, fifty dollars, plus the renewal fee".

The background check. No amount is published in the rules reviewed. The endorsement rule requires that a "fee must accompany the application for licensure" and the temporary-permit rule requires the "fee for the criminal background check", without stating either amount.

What any of this means for a particular application is for the board to determine.

Timelines, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none calculated.

On the temporary permit: "Beginning February 16, 1994, the temporary permit issued to the applicant awaiting licensure by examination becomes invalid upon notice to the applicant of the results of the first examination or 90 days following the date of issuance, whichever is earlier." No duration is stated for a permit held by an applicant awaiting endorsement.

On the background check as a gate: "A permanent license may not be issued until the criminal background check is complete."

On the renewal cycle: "An initial license expires on the licensee's birth date in the second calendar year following issuance, and biennially on the licensee's birth date thereafter."

On a lapse: "Any fee for renewal of license delivered in person to the board or postmarked after the filing date indicated in the notice shall not be accepted, and the license shall lapse." And on reinstatement: "If the license has been lapsed for six or more years, it may be reinstated according to provisions in SDCL 36-9-47.1."

On a name change: the rule requires that an applicant or licensee "must, within sixty days, submit to the board an application and a certified copy of the" document the rule goes on to specify.

No processing time for an endorsement application is stated in the sources reviewed. What any of this means for a particular application is for the board to determine.

Source map

Two publishers appear below, and the split is itself a finding. The South Dakota Board of Nursing publishes its own licensure instructions, forms, fee page and compact page on sdbon.org, and its robots.txt asks automated readers not to retrieve them; this project honours that, so none of those pages was fetched by any transport. The same rules the board administers are also published by the South Dakota Legislature, which asks nothing of the kind, and that is where the substance below comes from. Only the board's own About and Contact Us pages sit outside its directive and are quoted from the board directly.

Change log

Aug 31, 2026 · Page created. Captured first-party and appended mechanically by `tools/capture.py` from `tools/recipes/south-dakota.json`, transport curl throughout: chapters 20:48:03, 20:48:06 and 20:48:15 of the Administrative Rules of South Dakota from the Legislature's rules API, and the Board of Nursing's own About and Contact Us pages, all retrieved Aug 31, 2026. Findings recorded rather than smoothed: (1) the board's robots.txt disallows every path a licensure page is built from — `/RN_LPN`, `/new`, `/renew`, `/verify`, `/address_change`, `/A-P` and four advanced-practice paths — so no board licensure page was fetched, by any transport, and the rules layer was read from the Legislature instead; this page therefore quotes the state's rules where other jurisdiction pages quote a board's instructions, and the difference is stated wherever it bears on an answer; (2) the board's own `/news/` path is also disallowed, because `Disallow: /new` matches it as a prefix — recorded because an earlier note in this repository listed `/news/` among the allowed paths, and on the ordinary prefix reading of robots.txt it is not; (3) the same earlier note recorded that the board's site exposes nothing without JavaScript, which is true of its navigation and false of its page bodies: `/about/` and `/contact/` are allowed, render as static HTML, and supplied this page's entire contacts row; (4) chapter 20:48:15 is headed "NURSE LICENSURE COMPACT (Repealed, 45 SDR 9, effective July 30, 2018)" and all four of its sections read "Repealed.", so the rules state no compact participation and no multistate privilege, and this page asserts neither — what replaced the chapter is not stated in the rules captured; (5) two current rules nonetheless use the phrase "privilege to practice" and cite "SDCL 36-9-21, 36-9A-41", naming a statute chapter that is not captured here and is listed capture-pending, so the compact question is open in the record rather than answered in it; (6) every fee in chapter 20:48:06 is published as words rather than figures, and is quoted that way here; (7) the licensed-practical-nurse fee rule reads "For a licensed practice nurse license by endorsement, one hundred dollars", using "practice" where the rest of the rule uses "practical", preserved verbatim; (8) the temporary permit's stated 90-day expiry is written for the applicant awaiting examination, and no duration is stated for the permit held by an applicant awaiting endorsement, which is recorded as an absence rather than read across; (9) the rules name no national verification system — Nursys and NCSBN appear nowhere in them — and the verification form is "the form prescribed by the board", published on a page this project did not fetch; (10) the Legislature's rules HTML carries Microsoft Word export artifacts, including document-properties blocks naming internal authors and revision counts, preserved verbatim in the packet and quoted nowhere on this page. Capture pending: SDCL chapters 36-9 and 36-9A, and every board-published instruction, form, fee page, verification form and compact page on the disallowed paths. The remedy for the latter is to ask rather than to circumvent, and the access-request letter at `research/utah-access-request.md` is the template. A tool change was required to read this publisher and is recorded here because it bears on reproducibility: `capture.py` gained a `json-doc` extractor, because the Legislature's rules site is a JavaScript application whose content is served as JSON at a companion address, and no existing extractor read a bare JSON body. Internet Archive captures: to be added. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed Aug 31, 2026. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.