WWW.USDOJ.GOV

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A South Dakota sanitary district and county were sued today by the Justice Department for intentionally excluding Native Americans from their electoral process.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, alleges that the Enemy Swim Sanitary District and Day County violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by excluding Native American citizens from the Enemy Swim Sanitary District. The sanitary district is comprised of several noncontiguous pieces of land owned by white individuals, which represent only 13 percent of the land area around Enemy Swim Lake. The sanitary district was drawn to exclude the remaining 87 percent, owned by the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe and about 200 of its members. All of the registered voters in the sanitary district are white.

"Native American citizens were intentionally discriminated against in establishing the boundaries of the Enemy Swim Sanitary District," said Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. "We will not allow the sanitary district to continue denying this basic right to any individual on the basis of race".

Sanitary districts in South Dakota are governmental subdivisions incorporated for the purpose of addressing problems with waste water disposal. A sanitary district has the power to construct and operate storm sewers, sanitary sewers, waste disposal systems and water systems. The district is governed by a board of trustees who are elected at-large and serve three-year staggered terms.

Enemy Swim Lake is located in Day County, a sparsely-populated county in the northeast part of the state. The area is within the disestablished reservation of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, in what is known as a "checkerboard" area of non Indian-owned parcels and adjacent Native American-owned parcels of land.

In a consent decree also filed today, Day County has agreed with the Justice Department that the Enemy Swim Sanitary District violates federal law and has agreed to approve incorporation of a sanitary district that is comprised of all voters, including the Native American citizens around and near Enemy Swim Lake. The Sanitary District defendants have refused to enter into this agreement.

Today's suit seeks an order dissolving the racially exclusionary sanitary district. The order further seeks to establish a sanitary district that includes all voters, including Native American citizens.

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