South Dakota Window Tint: 35% Front and 20% Rear, Each With a Written 9% Enforcement Tolerance

The two operative sections divide the car at the driver's seat. SDCL 32-15-2.4 reaches the front windshield, the side wing vents, and the side windows on either side forward of or adjacent to the operator's seat, and forbids one-way glass, adhesive film, or any other glaze or application that drops the light transmittance of those windows to a combined level below thirty-five percent. SDCL 32-15-2.5 covers the rear windows behind the operator's seat and sets the floor at twenty percent. The word doing the work in both is combined: the standard measures the film plus the factory glazing together, not the film's own rating, so a 35 percent film laid over glass that already passes 78 percent will not measure 35 percent.

Both sections then grant an enforcement tolerance of nine percent, added by SL 1994, ch 257. That is unusually explicit. Many states leave tolerance to a police manual or to the meter's stated accuracy; South Dakota put the number in the statute, which makes it an element a defendant can argue rather than a courtesy. Read together with the floors, the effective enforcement thresholds are 26 percent in front and 11 percent behind the driver.

The windshield is reached twice. It is named in the 35 percent rule of 32-15-2.4, and SDCL 32-15-2.9 separately bars any sunscreening device placed on or affixed to a windshield so as to obstruct or reduce the driver's clear view, and forbids extending film downward beyond the AS-1 line or below the lowest point of the sun visor. A windshield strip is therefore measured for transmittance and separately checked for how far down the glass it runs.

SDCL 32-15-2.6 supplies the measurement definition: light transmission is the ratio of the amount of total light to pass through a product or material to the amount of total light falling on the product or material and the glazing. SDCL 32-15-2.7 puts a duty on the supply side, requiring each manufacturer of film, glaze or other application to certify to the Department of Public Safety that its product complies with the specifications of 32-15-2.4 and 32-15-2.5. A South Dakota installer working from certified stock is selling against a filed certification, which is worth asking about before the film goes on.

SDCL 32-15-2.10 governs the meter and is the most useful section for anyone contesting a ticket. Testing equipment used to enforce 32-15-2.4 or 32-15-2.5 must be used in compliance with the meter manufacturer's testing procedures, and the officer shall note on the citation the serial number of the meter used and the date the meter was certified. A citation that omits the serial number or the certification date is missing something the statute directs the officer to record.

Enforcement is entirely roadside. Administrative Rules of South Dakota Article 61:04, Motor Vehicle Safety Inspection, is marked void pursuant to SL 1979, ch 220 and SDCL 1-26-8.1, and Article 61:05, Motor Vehicle Equipment, is void pursuant to SL 1983, ch 14. The only inspection surviving in SDCL chapter 32-21 is 32-21-3.1, an annual inspection before October first of vehicles carrying sixteen or more passengers including the driver that are owned or operated by a nonprofit organization, and its implementing rule ARSD 61:31:01:08 requires only safety glass or safety glazing material in compliance with SDCL 32-15, stating no percentage. No South Dakota inspection lane holds a tint meter.

There is no medical exemption. Chapter 32-15 carries no carve-out for photosensitivity, lupus, or a physician's certificate. Its only exemptions are 32-15-2.1, which excuses a vehicle built before July 1, 1953 whose driver wears an eye protective device, and 32-15-13.1, which frees silage and seasonal farm trucks of six to twenty tons from 32-15-1, 32-15-2, 32-15-5, 32-15-7, 32-15-10 and 32-15-13. The tint sections are not on that list.

9 is a Class 2 misdemeanor. Under SDCL 22-6-2 that carries a maximum of thirty days imprisonment in a county jail or a five hundred dollar fine, or both, and it is a criminal conviction rather than the civil petty-offense track that SDCL 22-6-7 applies to the neighbouring windshield rules at 32-15-5 and 32-15-6. 1. 10: the officer must have used the equipment in compliance with the meter manufacturer's testing procedures and must have written the meter's serial number and certification date on the citation.

5 is part of the offense definition, so the state's reading has to clear 26 percent in front or 11 percent in the rear, not merely fall below the headline figure. There is no fix-it or compliance-certificate route in chapter 32-15; stripping the film does not dispose of the charge, and a later stop can produce a second Class 2 misdemeanor on the same vehicle.