Aug. 21, 2025, update:
Supreme Court rescinds Judicial Emergency in South Dakota
After being advised that all state government network systems are back up and operating, the South Dakota Supreme Court has issued (Aug. 21, 2025) an order rescinding the judicial emergency they declared Wednesday.
During the judicial emergency, all deadlines, time schedules, due dates and filing requirements imposed by applicable statutes, rules and court orders were suspended retroactive to Aug. 19, 2025. The network issue impacted the state court system’s ePayments, eCourts and File and Serve platforms.
The Court declared the existence of a judicial emergency and rescinded the order in accordance with SDCL 16-3-11 through 15.
Aug. 20, 2025:
The South Dakota Supreme Court has temporarily suspended all Unified Judicial System deadlines, time schedules, due dates and filing requirements because of a large-scale technical problem with the State Data Center in Pierre.
The South Dakota court system’s ePayments, eCourts and File and Serve platforms are affected. The UJS’ website at https://ujs.sd.gov is still accessible, but the online platforms are currently offline. In addition, some court office phones across the state are not working. Court filings and payments may still be submitted, in person, at county clerk of courts offices until the issue is resolved.
A power outage on Tuesday (Aug. 19, 2025) took down all state-hosted services and some network communications. Network teams with the Bureau of Information and Technology and the State Engineer are working to resolve the issue.
Lisa Rahja, executive communications manager for BIT, told DRG Media Group that the outage is NOT connected to any type of cybersecurity or hacking incident. She said the interruption has been confirmed as a hardware failure directly caused by the power outage at the State Data Center.
The state Supreme Court declared the existence of a judicial emergency in accordance with SDCL 16-3-11 through 15. The order is effective retroactive to Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025.
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