Minnesota Supreme Court upholds law restoring felon voting rights
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Supreme Court has affirmed a state law restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated felons, denying a challenge filed by the Minnesota Voters Alliance.
The 2023 law restored voting rights to 55,000 Minnesotans on probation, supervision and work release who previously had to wait for those periods to end before they could vote again.
The Minnesota Voters Alliance filed a challenge to the law, arguing it returned the right to vote to felons after they had a single civil right restored, while the Minnesota Constitution prohibits felons from voting "unless restored to civil rights," emphasizing the plurality. The group also argued that, since the new law violates the Constitution, it is unlawful to use public funds to educate those affected on their voting rights.
An Anoka County judge overruled the challenge, and the group appealed to the state Supreme Court.
In its ruling, the court found the group has no standing. The challenge was based on taxpayers standing, which according to a lower court "requires a challenge to an illegal expenditure or waste of tax money." The lower court found the group did "not challenge a specific disbursement of public funds," but used the money as "a mere jumping-off point ... to challenge something that has nothing to do with money: namely the eligibility of some citizens to vote."
The Supreme Court agreed with the district court in its ruling, saying the challenge's monetary concerns were "incidental" to the real issue. The court went a step further in outlining why it affirmed the law.
"We share the district court's concern that granting taxpayer standing in this case 'would render the very concept of taxpayer standing meaningless' because 'practically every law entails at least some public expenditure,'" the court said. "We instead hold that when standing would not otherwise exist to challenge a substantive law, a taxpayer cannot manufacture standing by pointing to expenditures that are incidental to implementing the law."
Last November, the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected a similar challenge to the law, ruling that a lower court judge overstepped his authority when he declared it unconstitutional.