What compact privilege is
A multistate license from your primary state of residence carries compact privilege — the authority to practice in other compact states without licensing separately in each. It only exists between states that are live in the Nurse Licensure Compact.
Practicing in South Dakota on privilege
Because South Dakota participates, an active multistate license lets you work in South Dakota — common for travel nurses and telehealth. Privilege follows the patient’s location and your home-state license staying active and multistate.
The law that governs this in South Dakota
Working in South Dakota on another state’s license is practice in South Dakota, so it is South Dakota’s own nurse practice act that defines what you may do and the South Dakota Board of Nursing that applies it. That act is South Dakota nursing licensure law (Board of Nursing, DOH).
The compact itself is separate law. South Dakota adopted it at S.D. Codified Laws §§ 36-9-98 to 36-9-99 (Nurse Licensure Compact), which is what allows a multistate license issued elsewhere to reach South Dakota at all — the practice act still decides what you may do once it does.
South Dakota gives the compact no chapter of its own — it is two sections at the end of ch. 36-9, the registered and practical nurses chapter, which is why a search for a South Dakota compact CHAPTER finds nothing and why this citation went unconfirmed here for so long. § 36-9-98 carries the whole compact: “The Nurse Licensure Compact is enacted into law and entered into with all other jurisdictions that legally join the compact.” The section after it is the unusual one. § 36-9-99 is headed “General funds not to be used to support compact” — South Dakota legislated the compact and, in the very next breath, legislated how it may not be paid for. Most states say nothing about funding at all.
Confirm before you rely on it
License status changes and the compact evolves. Confirm your own license type on Nursys and check South Dakota’s current rules with the South Dakota Board of Nursing. CompactStates.com is an independent guide, not a licensing authority.
Since when has a compact license worked in South Dakota?
Nurses holding another state’s multistate license have been able to practice in South Dakota since January 19, 2018. It has been a member long enough that most guidance you find will be accurate on this point.
Where a South Dakota multistate license reaches
If your South Dakota license is multistate — not every South Dakota license is — it carries privilege into these 39 jurisdictions, because each one currently issues and honours multistate licenses. It reaches nowhere else, and a non-compact state needs its own license by endorsement.
Two conditions sit underneath this list and neither is visible on it. Your primary state of residence must actually be South Dakota — privilege follows residence, not where the license was issued. And the license itself must be multistate rather than single-state, which is a fact about your record that only verification can settle.
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