Who Counts as a Veteran in South Dakota

South Dakota runs almost every state benefit off one definition, and that definition is broader than any other in this catalog. Section 33A-2-1 says that for all statutes relating to rights, privileges, ceremonial recognition, exemptions and benefits, except a state bonus, a veteran is a person who has served the full obligation for active duty, reserve, or National Guard service in the military, or received an early discharge for a medical condition, hardship, reduction in force, or at the convenience of the military, and has been separated or discharged honorably or under honorable conditions. Read that against its neighbours. There is no minimum number of days. There is no federal active duty requirement. A National Guard member who served a six-year obligation without a single federalisation is a veteran of South Dakota, full stop, and 33A-2-1 goes on to name the benefits it reaches: the veterans designation on a driver licence or identification card, veterans licence plates, the veterans job preference, and burial benefits under 33A-5-2. Montana needs three separate definitions to get part of the way there and North Dakota needed a 2025 act to widen its core term. A general discharge qualifies here, because "under honorable conditions" is the floor. The second definition does most of the real work in education. Section 33A-2-2 defines "wartime veteran" by qualifying military service, and that is the term the free tuition statute runs on. The qualifying periods are the First World War, the Second World War including allied service by United States citizens from September 1, 1939, June 25, 1950 to May 7, 1975 as a single continuous block, and August 2, 1990 until the Legislature declares hostilities over. Subdivision (7) adds any service for which the veteran earned an armed forces expeditionary medal or other campaign or service medal for combat operations outside the United States, whenever it happened. Subdivision (8) is the sleeper. A person is a wartime veteran on one day or more of active duty in any period whatsoever "if the veteran has established the existence of a service-connected disability". A veteran who served entirely between 1975 and 1990, a gap in every other subdivision, becomes a wartime veteran the day a service connection is granted. That is the route that opens the free tuition entitlement, and the education statute then adds its own floor of ten percent for anyone qualifying solely that way. Reserve and Guard training service is expressly not active duty for the wartime definition, unless the Department of Veterans Affairs rules that the training involved direct participation in or direct support of combat operations against a hostile force. Two places the definitions do not line up, both worth knowing before an argument at a counter. The bonus chapter carves itself out of 33A-2-1 and defines its own veteran in 33A-2-10(6), keyed to service in a set window and to six months of residency before entry. And the veteran designation on an ordinary driver licence under 32-12-17.15 asks for "an honorably discharged veteran having served in the armed forces of the United States", not for a 33A-2-1 veteran, while the commercial driver licence designation in 32-12A-20.2 does point at the 33A-1-1 definition, which is 33A-2-1. Two licence counters in the same building are running different tests, and the narrower one sits on the licence most people carry. The Department of Veterans Affairs' own page quoting 33A-2-1 and 33A-2-2 is out of date in two visible ways: it still names "§§ 33A-5-2 and 33A-5-3" although 33A-5-3 was repealed in 2018, and it still says the Veterans Commission makes the training determination although a 2020 act moved that to the department.