First Thursday, October 2026

It's a Minnesota case and the name of the case is Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association versus Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training.

It's a Minnesota Court of Appeals case, and it was decided April 20th of this year.

And so, you know, it's a Minnesota Post case.

And so, you know, the plaintiffs in this case, there are a couple of plaintiffs in this case, and that actually was an issue in this case, although not the one that we or that I find the most interesting or important.

But one of the plaintiffs is the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, the MPPOA.

I'm just gonna call them the association because it makes my life easier.

The association represents about, according to them and in the case, about 90% of police officers in Minnesota.

And they sued their post board, the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training, post boards, that term.

Some of you folks in Oregon and you're gonna have states that use exactly the same language.

um, to describe this board, but it's basically the police certification board.

So in Minnesota, you need a license to be a police officer in most States you do.

And so, uh, their post board is the entity that, um, tell someone they can be a police officer and, uh, under the States of that law or the laws of that state, depending on how you want to say it.

And so, um, That's what happens when I'm thirsty.

So what happened in this case? So the association sues the post board after the post board allegedly released the names and dates of birth of 257, I believe, 257 undercover officers in response to a 2024 data request.

There were individual, three individual undercover officers also joined the suit as plaintiffs.

They sought to represent a class of similarly situated undercover officers.

Those plaintiffs, or all of the plaintiffs, alleged in this instance that the disclosure by the post board violated Minnesota's Government Data Practices Act.

I'm just going to call that the Data Act.

Because, you know, all personnel data, and that's an important term, quote, personnel data, maintained by a government entity relating to an individual employed as a law enforcement, as an undercover law enforcement officer is private.

And so under, we've got this state law in Minnesota that says that if John Q.

Public requests information, the employer is prohibited from releasing personnel data uh uh especially if we're talking about an undercover law enforcement officer uh and yet uh the post board in response to a request which you don't actually have the request which is kind of crazy in the case but in response to a request for something the post board released uh the names and dates of birth of all police officers including undercover police officers right and then hence the concern and so what the association argued and what the officers argued was Post's disclosure jeopardized active investigations, and it forced officers to take individual or additional efforts to protect their privacy, to protect themselves and their families.

They were essentially outed.

undercover officers were outed by Post.

And in doing so, Post went too far.

So what did Post do? Post moved to dismiss the complaint, right? The first thing you basically do when you get sued is you say, we're going to file a motion to dismiss this thing.