Minnesota is a leader among states testing First Amendment limits on regulating speech and expression in the name of protecting the public, with its mandatory social media warning labels and criminal bans on AI-generated “nudification” – including barechested men – and election-related “deepfakes” that mock politicians.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused to block the deepfake law by reading an unwritten parody exception into it, wasn’t so tolerant when it came to Minnesota’s potential censorship of an election integrity group.
A three-judge panel ordered a lower court to block a voter-interference law as applied to the Minnesota Voters Alliance and its members as their case moves forward, leaving them free to publicly assert — without risking prosecution — that the Land of 10,000 Lakes violates its constitution by letting felons vote before their “civil rights” have been “restored.”
“A group of Minnesotans want to express their belief that certain felons cannot vote. Can the state criminalize their speech? In denying a preliminary injunction, the district court thought so. We disagree,” Judge David Stras wrote for the unanimous panel, nominated by presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, faulting the law as a prior restraint without “procedural safeguards.”
House File 3 works in tandem with HF 28, which restores voting rights to felons whenever they are “not incarcerated for the offense” – even if they are still serving the sentence – by criminalizing the spread of certain information within 60 days of an election. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed both laws in 2023.
HF 3’s “deceptive practices” section prohibits transmitting information that “intends to impede or prevent another person from exercising the right to vote” and is known to be “materially false,” including “the qualifications for or restrictions on voter eligibility at an election.”
“The Alliance is worried that it already has a target on its back” from both state and county prosecutors, who can “pursue gross-misdemeanor charges” against alleged violators and civil actions “to prevent or restrain a violation,” Stras’s opinion says. The law also lets anyone “injured by” a supposed violation bring civil actions.
Anoka County buttressed MVA’s case by bringing a counterclaim after it sued Attorney General Keith Ellison and Anoka County Attorney Brad Johnson, by seeking money damages and an injunction against MVA for violating the law, according to the voter integrity group.
ACLU supports election censorship law
The Upper Midwest Law Center and Liberty Justice Center, which represent MVA and its members, cheered the ruling.
“The First Amendment does not allow the government to end an argument by threatening prosecution,” UMLC President Doug Seaton said.
Minnesota cannot “silence political debate simply because an election is near,” LJC senior counsel Reilly Stephens said.
Ellison’s office told Just the News “we’re evaluating all of our options to best protect Minnesotans’ freedom to vote.”
Protect Democracy United counsel Cameron Kister accused the 8th Circuit panel of violating its own precedent.
“The Minnesota Deceptive Practices Provision is not a statute that targets falsity and nothing more; it is a statute that targets falsity deployed to accomplish a harm the common law has recognized for centuries,” the progressive activist wrote.
In line with its turn against free speech for select groups since the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, the ACLU supported Ellison and Johnson in a friend-of-the-court brief, arguing the election censorship law is narrowly tailored and responded to “incidents of purposeful, targeted election disinformation aimed at preventing voters from exercising their constitutional right.”
The elected Democrats already triumphed over MVA’s constitutional challenge to the felon-voting law itself, which the Minnesota Supreme Court tossed on the grounds that the “taxpayer standing” asserted by MVA and its members “does not exist when a taxpayer simply seeks to generally restrain ‘illegal action[s] on the part of public officials.'”
Hellbound and Down 