The house chamber stands half-empty as Democratic representatives boycott the session on the first day of the 94th legislative session at the Minnesota State Capitol Building in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer.
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the 29 recall petitions against the House Democrats who boycotted the beginning of the legislative session earlier this year, ruling the allegations failed to meet the level of “serious malfeasance or nonfeasance” that’s needed for a successful recall.
The Minnesota Republican Party last month filed recall petitions against 29 House Democrats for being absent from the Capitol for three weeks at the start of the legislative session. All 66 House Democrats boycotted the Capitol, in an effort to deny House Republicans a quorum, but the Minnesota Republican Party only submitted 29 recall repetitions.
Democrats feared Republicans would use their temporary 67-66 majority to prevent the seating of DFL Rep. Brad Tabke of Shakopee, so they sought to deny House Republicans a quorum.
The Minnesota Supreme Court in January ruled that 68 members must be present for a quorum, so the 67 House Republican members were unable to conduct business on their own.
Democratic-Farmer-Labor House members eventually conceded the speakership in order to come to a power-sharing agreement and seat Tabke, who won a narrow contest marred by missing ballots.
“Now hopefully we can just focus on getting the work of the legislative session done and put that rancor and division behind us, understanding that none of that needed to happen in the first place,” DFL House leader Melissa Hortman said Monday.
Minnesota’s recall process is lengthy, and it’s difficult to successfully recall a lawmaker because of the state’s high standard.
Republicans based their recall petitions on House Democrats’ Capitol absence and an early swearing-in ceremony they held before the legislative session began, which they argued was illegitimate and a type of malfeasance that met the standards for recall.
In her ruling, Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote that recalls require a “serious malfeasance or nonfeasance,” which the petitions didn’t meet.
“The quorum-related allegations rest on the allegation that each of the state representatives failed ‘to perform [their] constitutional and inherent duty to represent [their] constituents by not attending the initial organizing session and all subsequent sessions thereafter of the Minnesota House of Representatives,’” Hudson wrote.
The petitions also conceded, however, that Democrats eventually returned to the Capitol on Feb. 6, which undermines the seriousness of their absence.
“Critically, this concession also fatally undermines the alleged seriousness of any nonfeasance as alleged in the petitions, which is an independent requirement for recall,” Hudson wrote.
The allegation of malfeasance for the early swearing-in ceremony is also unfounded, Hudson wrote, because the petitions didn’t successfully show that the swearing-in ceremony was held unlawfully, and previous chief justices have dismissed recall petitions for oath-related arguments.
“Each of the recall petitions is dismissed for failure to allege specific facts that, if proven, would constitute grounds for recall,” Hudson wrote.