Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison have petitioned the Minnesota Supreme Court to decide a case that could transform how the Minnesota Legislature writes and passes legislation.
In its essence, the case poses the question: When is the process behind passing legislation so atrocious it is actually illegal?
Last week, Walz and Ellison appealed a ruling by a Ramsey County judge who found that the state’s ban on binary triggers on guns violates a clause in the Minnesota Constitution, written in 1858, that “No law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.”
The binary trigger ban was part of House File 5247, better known as the omnibus policy bill, a 1,430-page Leviathan that raucously passed the Legislature in the waning moments of their 2024 session.
In a ruling dripping with disgust toward the Minnesota Legislature, Ramsey Judge Leonardo Castro noted that the omnibus bill contained hundreds of subjects. Castro forecast “that the people and businesses of Minnesota” will “bring hundreds of lawsuits” to “hack off, piece by piece” the omnibus bill’s “many offending portions.”
Walz and Ellison hope to head off this hacking, writing in their petition, “Single-subject challenges to the 2024 omnibus bill are certain to balloon and soon.”
So far, though, there are not any other single-subject lawsuits, besides a case filed by UnitedHealth Group. Here is why the litigation floodgates have not opened, and what else to know about the Legislature’s taste for omnibus bills being in the crosshairs.
What was this binary trigger ruling and why should I care?
The 2024 omnibus bill passed minutes before midnight on the last day of the legislative session on a completely party line vote, with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party holding majorities in both chambers. Republicans said they had no time to read the bill, and chanted “USA! USA!” as it was being brought onto the House floor.
Contained in the bill is a ban on sales of binary trigger guns, a type of gun that discharges a cartridge during both the backward and forward movement of the weapon.
The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus sued, arguing that the omnibus bill, whose original title is over 300 words before it keels over in repetition of the word “subdivision,” violated the single-subject rule.
The gun group had a sympathetic judge in Castro. In his order, released last month, Castro noted that the Legislature gave the omnibus bill “one of the broadest titles conceivable,” which is the “operation and financing of state government.”
“And yet it is difficult to say that even that very broad subject can fairly be called the common theme of the gargantuan bill,” Castro wrote.
The judge wrote that he was tempted to rule the entire omnibus bill unconstitutional.
However, Castro noted that in prior single-subject cases, the part of the bill relevant to the lawsuit got severed from the rest of the legislation. This is why the judge suggested future lawsuits to invalidate other pieces of the omnibus bill.
Castro’s ruling did not just invite challenges to the 2024 law. It also questioned the whole business of omnibus bills, which have become the Legislature’s de facto mode of writing legislation.
The Walz and Ellison petition, whose lead author is state Solicitor General Liz Kramer, admits as much, treating omnibus bills as a fact of life, like a stomach flu or freezing rain.
“Since the state’s founding, Minnesota courts have struggled to adjudicate challenges brought under the single-subject clause while respecting the Legislature’s lawmaking role,” Kramer wrote. “The struggle is most acute in the context of omnibus bills, which is how the modern Legislature conducts most of its business.”
What do Walz and Ellison want?
They want to bypass the normal appeals process by having the state Supreme Court take the case instead of the intermediary step of a state appeals court.
“This dispute raises constitutional questions of the highest import, and the resolution of those questions will impact all Minnesotans,” Kramer wrote.
Also, their petition comes amid a statewide focus on gun violence following the fatal shooting of former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, and the Annunciation school shooting this summer. Binary triggers “increase the weapon’s rate of fire,” which means “a less-safe Minnesota, amid an epidemic of gun violence.”
But maybe most importantly, the state wants a swift decision because they seem to think they can win.
The petition quotes heavily from a different single-subject ruling, issued in June, by a different Ramsey Court Judge, Mark Ireland.
In that case, UnitedHealth sued over a part in the 2024 omnibus bill that banned for-profit companies, such as UnitedHealth, from being one of the managed care organizations in Minnesota’s Medicaid program.
The ban had a major impact on the Minnetonka-based health insurer, which had been the first for-profit managed care option for state Medicaid patients.
In his decision, which UnitedHealth has appealed, Ireland noted that the omnibus bill had clear subheadings, dealing with issues such as health insurance and employee misclassification.
Ireland said that past judges have exercised “judicial restraint” even in the face of previous unwieldy omnibus bills. And he wrote that the circus surrounding the legislation was unimportant.
“The length of the 2024 omnibus bill and the timing of when it was passed by the Minnesota legislature is largely irrelevant,” Ireland wrote.
Why was the single-subject clause stuck into the state constitution in the first place?
“The single-subject rule was meant to prevent legislative mischief,” said David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University. “It was a transparency and accountability issue so the public could read the title of the bill and understand it was.”
According to a 2019 paper by Columbia Law School professor Richard Briffault, 43 different states have a single-subject rule. And, like Minnesota, most states adapted this law in the 19th century.
“In the last two decades, state courts have used single-subject rules to invalidate laws dealing with firearms regulation, abortion, tort reform, immigration, minimum wage laws, sex offenders, enhanced criminal penalties and school vouchers,” Briffault wrote.
But instead of celebrating single-subject laws for keeping bonkers state legislatures in check, Briffault found that the rules were “deeply problematic,” writing, “Courts and commentators have been unable to come up with a clear and consistent definition of what constitutes a ‘single subject.’”
In Minnesota, Schultz said, enforcement has also been uneven.
For example, in what seemed to be a landmark case at the time, Associated Builders and Contractors won a 1999 court of appeals decision that invalidated part of a state omnibus tax bill. A concurring opinion suggested that the entire omnibus package be ruled unconstitutional.
Like the binary trigger case, Schultz said, the Associated Builders ruling all but rolled out the red carpet for copycat lawsuits. But most of those lawsuits never came to pass and judges, like Castro and Ireland this summer, continued to issue conflicting opinions.
It is maybe with this history in mind that, according to the attorney general’s office, the state is not defending itself in any single-subject cases besides the binary trigger and UnitedHealth matters.
So, the binary trigger ruling will not lead to Minnesotans filing lawsuits over omnibus bills?
The speculation that the binary trigger case could still lead to dozens of lawsuits is twofold. One is that the 2024 omnibus policy bill set a new standard for excess.
“The bills have gotten crazier and crazier in size and there is a growing lack of transparency and accountability in government,” said Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, executive director of Minnesota Common Cause.
Also, Belladonna-Carrera noted of the binary trigger case, “The judge’s order is more of a rebuke of the legislative process than what you’ve seen judges do in the past. He took the biggest and fattest yellow highlighter and said, ‘Hello! Hello!’”
Still, Common Cause, a nonprofit based in Washington, does not have state office resources to file lawsuits, Belladona-Carrera noted, which takes time and money away from organizing and lobbying. Only a class-action lawsuit, the Common Cause leader said, would make sense financially.
On the other hand, Schultz noted that more lawsuits could be filed if the Supreme Court sides with the Gun Caucus.
“It is possible people are awaiting an appellate decision,” Schultz said.
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