In re Sunbear Being Ombudsman 2026 SDSC 13

Summary Decision - In re Sunbear Being Ombudsman [2026] SDSC 13

Date of judgment	16th April 2026
Justices	Chief Justice Ed Justice TheLittleSparty Justice Ivy Cactus Justice Terak Justice Muggy
Held	The appointment of Sunbear to Chief Ombudsman was done improperly.
Ruling	5-0
Applicable precedent	Affirms In re Impeachment of halfcat [2023] SDSC 4

MAJORITY OPINION by Justice Muggy

(with Chief Justice Ed, Justice TheLittleSparty, Justice Ivy Cactus, and Justice Terak agreeing)

Introduction

[1] With this case, Petitioner Zepz367 seeks review of Sunbear’s ascension to the Chief Ombudsmanship, claiming that the Senate did not follow proper procedure, and thus the position of Chief Ombudsman is vacant. The Petitioner also requested that this court issue a writ of quo warranto, and, as it stems from the same question, the court decided to handle it alongside the petition for judicial review.

[2] At the commencement of this case, the court also issued an injunction on Sunbear holding the position of Chief Ombudsman.

Summary of the Petition

[3] The Petitioner does not offer much in terms of argumentation, and maintains that the Senate violated the process of appointing the Chief Ombudsman outlined in Article 3 of the Government Oversight Act 2025 (henceforth “GOA”) by failing to appoint an Ombudsman within 2 days of the nomination period closing, and holding an illegal vote to confirm Sunbear to remedy said error.

[4] Rather frustratingly, the Petitioner did not provide many points of reference when it comes to the procedural history of Sunbear’s renewal as Ombudsman, leading to this court having to look through Senate threads on its own, which is, shockingly, a rather tedious task.

Procedural Considerations

[5] Before we can throw the book at the Senate for their ineptitude, we must first determine if the procedural errors that the Petitioner points out did in fact occur.

[6] First, we determine whether the Ombudsman submitted a formal request to the Senate pursuant to Article 2 Section 2 §2, as if they did, then the nomination process never had to have taken place at all.

[6.1] After a search of Sunbear’s messages, this court has not found a request, in writing, for a renewal of his term, and thus will continue looking at the procedural record.

[7] When it comes to the running of the nomination period, we now look at when it started, which was March 25th, 16:55 UTC, and when it ended, which was 24 hours later, being March 26th 16:55 UTC.

[8] With this, we now apply the time limit the GOA sets on the Senate to appoint an Ombudsman, which is to do it within 2 days (and for the purposes of this court, 48 hours) of the nomination period’s closure.

[8.1] To this end, the Senate actually held two votes for the appointment of an Ombudsman. One that started March 27th, 22:49 UTC and ended March 28th, 22:49 UTC (lasting 24 hours as governed by the Senate Rules and Procedures), and the second which started March 29th 1:57 UTC and ended March 30th 1:57 UTC (again, following the Senate Rules and Procedures).

[8.1.1] It should be noted that, unlike in the first vote where all candidates for the position were being voted on, in the second vote, another error occurred, as only Sunbear was being voted on as Chief Ombudsman, despite two other candidates being nominated during the nomination process.

[8.2] As clearly observed, both votes ended after 48 hours from the nomination period’s closure (March 26th 16:55 UTC), and thus the Senate failed to appoint an Ombudsman within 48 hours of the nomination period closing.

[9] This, then, would require the Senate to follow the procedure laid out in §3 and §4 of Article 2 Section 1 of the GOA to appoint an Ombudsman. Interestingly enough, though, the Senate had not established caucuses and committees at this point in time, and has only recently done so to resolve specific issue.

[9.1] It would certainly be prudent of the Senate to either change these procedures or require caucuses and committees to be established every Senate, as this court cannot fix this problem on its own, as doing so would be legislating from the bench, we defer to the Senate on this matter.

[10] Considering the above, we can determine that the Senate did not, in fact, follow the proper procedures for the appointment of the Chief Ombudsman.

Procedural Errors and Application of In re Impeachment of Halfcat

[11] Now that we’ve determined that there were procedural errors, we can apply, and perhaps expand upon In re Impeachment of halfcat_ [2023] SDSC 4 and its permittance of procedural errors in specific cases.

[12] There are a few criteria that we can look at when it comes to allowing procedural errors to stand, being—

[12.1] The procedural error not having changed the result of the vote from what it would’ve been if it hadn’t occurred.

[12.2] The procedural error not having caused much confusion or harm relative to the result.

[12.3] If voiding the results following the procedural error would cause more harm than allowing the result to stand.

[13] When looking at the case through this angle, we can now apply it to the Senate’s conduct in appointing Sunbear as Chief Ombudsman—

[13.1] When determining if the result of the vote would’ve changed, we can look at a few things, but will primarily look at the surrounding context of the confirmation. The votes conducted to appoint an Ombudsman, as described in [8.1], were done differently, and due to this, we can observe how the result would’ve changed if that procedural error hadn’t occurred. Clearly, as occurred in the first vote, Sunbear wouldn’t have gotten 2/3rds of the Senate to support his confirmation as Chief Ombudsman, and that support only came when he was the only candidate presented (albeit invalidly), still only barely reaching a 2/3rds majority with a vote of 4 ayes to 2 nays.