The COVID-19 public health emergency was the first to test Minnesota’s emergency management laws. Four years of litigation and more than two dozen lawsuits proved that the statutes were flexible enough to allow the Governor, Tim Walz, to manage a novel emergency effectively. While 16,397 Minnesotans have died from COVID-19, as of December 5, 2024, it is clear that without the precautions taken by the Governor and the Executive Council, the devastation would have been much worse. That inherent flexibility opened the statutes to many non-frivolous lawsuits regarding their interpretation. Because the Governor and Executive Council stayed well within their authority, and lawyers and judges worked overtime to interpret any ambiguities in the statutes, our state law is better prepared for another public health emergency.
This Article assembles the case law developed surrounding the emergency management powers in chapter 12 of the Minnesota Statutes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins by reviewing the history of the Minnesota Emergency Management Act (“MEMA” or “the Act”), giving context on the COVID-19 pandemic, and summarizing the COVID-related executive orders (“EOs”) in Minnesota. The Article then reviews MEMA case law, organizing it by section of the Act. The Article concludes with recommendations for clarifying and modernizing the Act.
This Article does not summarize all case law relating to COVID-19. For example, there was litigation about whether allowing witnesses to appear virtually in criminal trials or excluding the public from those trials violated constitutional rights. There were also cases about whether commercial tenants had a contractual obligation to continue paying rent when they could not use their spaces as initially intended. There were also cases about whether employees were properly dismissed for refusing to get vaccinated or comply with other COVID-related work protocols. To keep a Minnesota focus and a manageable scope, those fascinating issues are left to other authors.
Finally, a note about the people who developed this case law: government lawyers and professional staff, along with district court judges and their staff, were unsung champions of the pandemic. It was governors’ legal teams who often had to draft executive orders on short notice, in response to changing facts of the pandemic. It was government lawyers who responded when plaintiffs brought emergency motions to enjoin those orders. And it was judges and their staff who read those motion papers and quickly turned around decisions. These public servants did amazing work under very difficult circumstances; they were also handling the pandemic fallout in their own families—whether that was small children unable to go to daycare, older children attempting to learn remotely, family members facing grave illness or mental health issues brought on by isolation. And the rest of the work did not stop. The cases challenging COVID-19 orders were on top of everyone’s usual slate of cases. Representing the Executive Council during the peacetime emergency resembled the stress and demands of being in trial, but for fifteen months straight. This Article is a tribute to those who developed this robust case law on Minnesota emergency powers.