In the Hopper: So long, slavery; quality ed; House guns

Editor’s note: In the Hopper is a summary of Minnesota legislation of interest to the legal community.

So long, slavery. In a unanimous vote, House Judiciary last week took a step toward eliminating slavery and involuntary servitude from the Minnesota Constitution.

House File 3008, from Judiciary Committee Chair John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul, passed on a unanimous voice vote on Feb. 25. From there it was sent to the House Corrections Division, which was scheduled to hear it on March 4, after this edition’s deadline.

The bill would ask voters to amend Article 1, Section 2 of the Minnesota Constitution, which currently reads, “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the state otherwise than as a punishment for a crime of which the party has been convicted.”

“That sentence problematically suggests the possibility of legal enslavement for convicts,” said Christopher Lehman, a St. Cloud State University professor and author of “Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State.” The instructor testified for the bill.

The slavery language, which is mirrored in the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment, has its roots in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Lehman said.

For 14 months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v Sandford decision, slavery was technically legal in the Minnesota territory. That changed when Minnesota officially became a free state in 1858. The Northwest Ordinance language—which at the time was considered anti-slavery—was incorporated into its constitution.

Slavery left a mark on the state, Lehman said. Besides being Dred Scott’s home during a crucial time in his life, Minnesota attracted big investments from slaveholding interests, which helped establish the University of Minnesota and the towns of Belle Plaine and Shakopee. Many local fur traders—including future governors Henry Sibley and Henry Rice—worked for the American Fur Company, which include slaveholding partners.

Deleting references to slavery from the constitution would achieve two aims, Lehman said. “First, the state will make the statement that slavery has no place in Minnesota today in any capacity,” said Lehman, who teaches ethnic studies at St. Cloud.

“Second, and just as important,” he said, “the state will finally sever all legal links between slavery and criminal convictions.”

Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell favors the ballot initiative. “The Minnesota Department of Corrections exists to transform lives, to make Minnesota a safer place to live,” he said. “Slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime would do nothing to advance that mission.”

Though she voted for the bill, Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, an attorney, expressed mild concern that if it passed into law, it might prompt lawsuits by prison inmates involved in work programs, which they might claim is outlawed “involuntary servitude.”

“I know from my previous law practice that a lot of litigation occurs in correctional institutions,” she said.

Schnell said that several states have already passed similar changes to their constitutions with no such effects. “There is no evidence or data to support that there will be an increase in those lawsuits,” he said.

Lesch, whose maternal ancestor Henry “Hank” Warner was a Scott County delegate who signed an early copy of the state constitution, said he’d welcome such litigation should it come.

“To the extent that this raises a question as to whether or not there is litigation that addresses legacies of slavery like that, that is absolutely a good thing,” Lesch said.

In a brief interview, Lesch said he doubts such suits would be either plentiful or successful. “If someone thinks that a prisoner will file lawsuits saying you can’t make me work because, you know, it’s indentured servitude, I’m like, no,” he said. “I think they’re very different things and I think the courts will recognize that.”

The bill’s companion, Senate File 2974 from Sen. Bobby Joe Champion has been referred to Senate Judiciary but has not yet been granted a hearing.

Quality ed. Though it faces stiff resistance from the state’s teacher’s union, a DFL-authored, GOP-backed constitutional amendment has something else going for it—star power.

House File 3658, from Rep. Rena Moran, DFL-St, Paul, has the backing of former Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice and NFL Hall of Famer Alan Page. Attorney General Keith Ellison is for it, too. So are 26 Republican and eight DFL co-authors.

The bill would rewrite language in Article 13 of the Minnesota Constitution, which currently guarantees only “a general and uniform system of public schools.”

If voters agree, that passage would be rephrased to say, “All children have a fundamental right to a quality public education that fully prepares them with the skills necessary for participation in the economy, our democracy and society.” Their skills would be “measured against uniform achievement standards.”

At a Feb. 25 press conference unveiling the constitutional amendment bill, Moran said that, despite the state’s best efforts, Minnesota’s educational disparities are among the nation’s worst. Last October, she said, the state Department of Education showed that less than 40% of African-American, Native American and Hispanic children had achieved proficiency by the 11th grade.

“This for me is a disaster,” she said. “For those children, it is a disaster. For those family families, it is a disaster. And for our communities and our state it is a disaster.”

Rep. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls, a co-author, agreed. “Right now, without something like this,” he said of the bill, “the status quo will keep pushing forward and the achievement gap would just get wider.”

But the state’s biggest teacher’s union, Education Minnesota, opposes the bill out of fear that it paves the way for taxpayer-funded, private school vouchers. Ellison, who appeared at the press conference, asserted that won’t happen.

“Is this going to allow vouchers?” he said. “When you have the word ‘public’ in the amendment three times, I think we’re good.”

Nonetheless, neither Ellison nor anyone else at the podium had specific answers to the question of what concrete results might stem from the amendment. The attorney general said that answers to such questions often aren’t known until long after the fact.

“We don’t know exactly how it’s going to unfold five, 10 years from now if we do it,” he said. “But it will yield positive benefits when we put children first. And we know this. We’ve got to set our intention, right?”

Page and Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari have been pushing for the amendment for months. At the Feb. 25 press conference, Page said that putting children first and supporting public school teachers are not mutually exclusive concepts.

“Teachers are not the problem,” he said. “Teachers are some of the most—I would argue the most important people in this community.” That is why he and Kashkari want the change, Page said.

“We think that our proposed amendment to Article 13 of the Minnesota Constitution will empower teachers,” he said.

The bill has no Senate companion. It was referred to the House Education Policy Committee, which has not scheduled it for a hearing.

House guns. It was a nearly five-hour debate, the contours of which were so familiar that they hardly need be repeated here (yet again). Suffice it to say that, after long months and 1½ sessions’ worth of political wrangling, the Minnesota House on Feb. 27 finally passed the DFL’s two signature pieces of gun reform.

They were uniformly opposed by Republicans, who said they would be ineffectual, aren’t needed and would violate the Constitution while punishing law-abiding citizens.

Democrats, who assert that the bills would save lives and have been successful in other states, did not enjoy universal support on their own side of the aisle. A handful of upstate Democrats sided with Republicans to vote no on them.

House File 8, the firearms background check bill from Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul, passed 69-62. Democrats who voted no included House Taxes Committee Chair Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth;  Labor Committee Chair Mike Sundin, DFL-Esko; Veterans and Military Affairs Chair Rob Ecklund, DFL-International Falls; Rep. Dave Lislegard, DFL-Aurora; and Rep. Julie Sandstede, DFL-Hibbing.

House File 9, from Rep. Ruth Richardson, DFL-Mendota Heights, is the red-flag bill that would allow law enforcement to petition for temporary removal of firearms. It passed 68-62. Its DFL defectors included all the same members as on the Pinto bill, plus Rep. Ben Lien, DFL-Moorhead.

The legislation now faces a near-vertical climb in the Senate, where leadership has expressed no interest in putting them up for committee votes.