The state Supreme Court ruled as constitutional Friday the law under which Gov. Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The emergency is long over but the courts still sought to answer the question of whether the Emergency Management Act is constitutional.
The emergency act gives the governor broad authority to respond quickly during crises, Justice Gordon Moore wrote for the court.
"A delicate balance must be struck to ensure that Minnesotans are protected from both government overreach and emergent threats to their health," the ruling said, adding that the act doesn't unconstitutionally usurp the authority of the Legislature.
"Although the separation of powers is a critical piece of our constitutional infrastructure, we cannot blind ourselves to the need for some degree of flexibility when delineating the boundaries of each governmental branch," Moore wrote.
Moore wrote that the Legislature remained a balance to the governor even during an emergency declaration. "We refuse to assume that the Legislature would act so wholly upon partisan interests that it becomes incapable of checking the governor's powers in the manner it itself provided," the ruling said.
The high court's decision affirms a Court of Appeals ruling last July finding that the act was constitutional and Walz had acted within his executive powers.
Also signing Moore's opinion were Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, and Justices Margaret Chutich, Anne McKeig and Paul Thissen. Justice G. Barry Anderson wrote a concurrence and Justice Karl Procaccini, who worked for Walz during the pandemic as general counsel, did not participate.
In March 2020, Walz declared a peacetime emergency, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as an act of nature and finding local governments inadequately able to respond.
The order didn't impose restrictions but encouraged Minnesotans to stay home when feeling ill. In following months, Walz "issued several more orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly affected many aspects of daily life for Minnesotans," the court said. Those included closing schools, restaurants and mandating face-coverings indoors.
In August 2020, the Golden Valley-based conservative Upper Midwest Law Center challenged the mask requirement and the law allowing for an emergency declaration.
In a statement, the center said it was disappointed in the court's ruling. The center had argued that the governor unconstitutionally took for himself the legislative power of the whole state.
Lawyer James Dickey said the court's decision "lays the groundwork for another seizure of Minnesota's legislative power by this governor — or any future governor — for any claimed emergency in the future, without any need to prove one actually exists."
In his concurrence, Anderson agreed the law is constitutional but advocated for amending the act to encourage more legislative participation during emergency declarations. He noted that currently a governor's powers can only be terminated if the House and Senate agree to do so.
"The more prolonged an emergency becomes, the greater the need to delineate the limits upon the authority of the executive branch," he wrote. "But it is to the policy making branches — the legislative and the executive — that this duty is assigned, not the judicial branch. And the time to address these fundamental issues dealing with the distribution of, and a check upon, political power is when no emergency is present."
The Supreme Court did not explain the unusual Friday release of the decision, but it was Anderson's final day on the bench. Incoming Justice Sarah Hennesy is expected to join the high court Monday.
