The most concrete thing Minnesota’s Legislature did to policing after 2020 was not a change to the deadly-force standard. It was a short subdivision listing three specific physical techniques and saying when an officer may not use them. That subdivision is Minn. Stat. § 609.06, subd. 3, and it is frequently described in press coverage as a “choke hold ban.” That description is close enough for a headline and wrong enough to matter in a case.
The provision is conditional. It bars three restraints unless the deadly-force statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.066, would authorize deadly force in that moment. Understanding what that condition does — and how demanding it is — requires reading the two sections together.
Start with the structure of § 609.06
Section 609.06 is the general Minnesota authorization for the use of force. Subdivision 1 opens this way:
Except as otherwise provided in subdivisions 2 to 4, reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another without the other’s consent when the following circumstances exist or the actor reasonably believes them to exist:
That opening clause is not decorative. Subdivision 1 is a limited authorization, expressly subject to subdivisions 2 through 4. Quote the sentence without its first six words and you have converted a qualified permission into a general one. The list that follows includes force used by a public officer “in effecting a lawful arrest,” “in the execution of legal process,” “in enforcing an order of the court,” or “in executing any other duty imposed upon the public officer by law,” along with nine other categories that reach parents, teachers, common carriers, and private citizens making arrests.
Subdivision 3 is one of the exceptions that subdivision 1 defers to.
The three restraints, and the condition attached to them
Subdivision 3 is titled “Limitations on the use of certain restraints.” Paragraph (a) reads:
A peace officer may not use any of the following restraints unless section 609.066 authorizes the use of deadly force to protect the peace officer or another from death or great bodily harm:
(1) a choke hold;
(2) tying all of a person’s limbs together behind the person’s back to render the person immobile; or
(3) securing a person in any way that results in transporting the person face down in a vehicle.
Three points follow from the text.
It is a conditional prohibition. The restraints are not categorically outlawed. They are unavailable except in the narrow circumstance in which § 609.066 would authorize deadly force to protect the officer or another from death or great bodily harm. In practice that is close to a ban, because the condition is hard to meet — but “close to” is not “the same as,” and a defense that the condition was satisfied is legally available.
The condition imports the whole deadly-force test. Section 609.066, subd. 2(a), permits deadly force “only if an objectively reasonable officer would believe, based on the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time and without the benefit of hindsight, that such force is necessary” — and, where the justification is protection from death or great bodily harm, only if the threat “can be articulated with specificity,” “is reasonably likely to occur absent action by the law enforcement officer,” and “must be addressed through the use of deadly force without unreasonable delay.” Those three items are cumulative. So the question in a restraint case is not “did the officer feel threatened.” It is whether a specific, likely, immediately pressing threat of death or great bodily harm existed at the moment the restraint was applied. The full architecture of that statute is set out in our article on Minn. Stat. § 609.066.
It applies to peace officers. Paragraph (a) is addressed to “[a] peace officer.” Section 609.066, subd. 1, gives “peace officer” the meaning found in Minn. Stat. § 626.84, subd. 1.
The definition of “choke hold” is unusually broad
Most of the litigable content in this subdivision is in paragraph (b), which defines the term:
For the purposes of this subdivision, “choke hold” means a method by which a person applies sufficient pressure to a person to make breathing difficult or impossible, and includes but is not limited to any pressure to the neck, throat, or windpipe that may prevent or hinder breathing, or reduce intake of air. Choke hold also means applying pressure to a person’s neck on either side of the windpipe, but not to the windpipe itself, to stop the flow of blood to the brain via the carotid arteries.
Read that carefully, because it forecloses the two arguments most often made about neck restraints.
The first sentence does not require that breathing actually stop. “Sufficient pressure to a person to make breathing difficult or impossible” reaches pressure that merely hinders breathing or reduces intake of air. And the phrase “includes but is not limited to” means pressure to the neck, throat, or windpipe is an example of a choke hold, not the boundary of the definition — a method that makes breathing difficult by some other mechanism is still covered.
The second sentence closes the door on the distinction officers and trainers have historically drawn between an air choke and a blood choke. A vascular or carotid restraint — pressure “on either side of the windpipe, but not to the windpipe itself, to stop the flow of blood to the brain via the carotid arteries” — is expressly a choke hold under this statute. The technique that departments used to teach as the safe alternative is inside the definition.
Clause (2), the hogtie prohibition, is drawn tightly: “tying all of a person’s limbs together behind the person’s back to render the person immobile.” Clause (3), unlike the other two, is defined by outcome rather than method — “securing a person in any way that results in transporting the person face down in a vehicle.” What matters under clause (3) is the position the person ends up in during transport, not the securing technique that got them there.
Where subdivision 3 came from, and what has changed since
Subdivision 3 is new law, not a restatement. The Revisor’s history for § 609.06 shows subdivision 3 as new in 2020, enacted by Laws 2020, 2d Spec. Sess., ch. 1, § 8 — an act “relating to public safety” that also created the duty to intercede and report, revised the deadly-force statute, and prohibited warrior-style training. The section has been amended since: 2024 legislation amended subdivision 1 and added subdivision 4. Subdivision 3 itself has not been amended since enactment.
Subdivision 4, the 2024 addition, provides that “[f]orce may not be used against another based on the discovery of, knowledge about, or potential disclosure of the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.” That one is unconditional.
The warrior-style training prohibition
The companion provision is Minn. Stat. § 626.8434, and it is aimed upstream — at what officers are taught rather than what they do. Subdivision 1 defines the target:
For purposes of this section, “warrior-style training” means training for peace officers that dehumanizes people or encourages aggressive conduct by peace officers during encounters with others in a manner that deemphasizes the value of human life or constitutional rights, the result of which increases a peace officer’s likelihood or willingness to use deadly force.
Subdivision 2 bars the Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training from certifying a continuing education course “that includes warrior-style training,” from granting continuing education credit to an officer for such a course, and from reimbursing an agency or officer for it. Subdivision 3 is the flat prohibition: “A law enforcement agency may not provide warrior-style training, directly or through a third party, to a peace officer.”
Note what § 626.8434 does not contain. There is no penalty clause in the section, and no express private remedy. As written, it operates through the Board’s certification, credit, and reimbursement functions and through a direct prohibition on agencies. The definitional language — “dehumanizes,” “deemphasizes the value of human life” — is also qualitative in a way that makes proof a real problem: showing that a particular curriculum crossed that line is an evidentiary project, not a citation to a course catalog.
How these provisions get used
The restraint limits do not stand alone. Minn. Stat. § 626.8452, subd. 1a, requires the Board’s model use-of-force policy to include a duty for officers “to only use deadly force including techniques that are restricted by section 609.06, subdivision 3, as authorized in section 609.066,” and requires that even then, “less lethal measures be considered first by the officer.” Paragraph (b) of that subdivision directs the Board to “incorporate all applicable standards in sections 609.06, subdivision 3, and 609.066,” and paragraph (c) required every chief law enforcement officer in the state to conform the agency’s own policy to the model. So the restraint limits are supposed to appear, in substance, in the written policy of every agency in Minnesota — which makes an agency’s policy a document worth obtaining early.
Minn. Stat. § 626.8475 adds an officer-level obligation: an officer must intercede when “present and observing another peace officer using force in violation of section 609.066, subdivision 2, or otherwise beyond that which is objectively reasonable under the circumstances” and is “physically or verbally able to do so,” and must report force exceeding “the degree of force permitted by law” in writing within 24 hours to the reporting officer’s chief law enforcement officer. A breach is subject to Board discipline.
One caution carries over from the deadly-force statute. Section 609.06 sits in the criminal code, and its text does not create a civil cause of action or state that a violation establishes civil liability. Whether a violation of subdivision 3 matters in a damages case — as negligence per se, as evidence of the standard of care, or not at all — is not answered by the statute, and we did not locate controlling Minnesota appellate authority resolving that question while researching this article. Subdivision 3 of § 609.066 does supply one express civil rule: § 609.06, among other sections, “may not be used as a defense in a civil action brought by an innocent third party.” That is a narrow provision about a defense, not a grant of a claim. A federal claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, meanwhile, is measured by the Fourth Amendment rather than by Minnesota’s statutes — the two-standards problem taken up in our article on Graham v. Connor and objective reasonableness. If a city is a potential defendant on a state-law theory, the notice and immunity rules matter as much as the merits: see suing a Minnesota city and the exceptions to Minnesota’s municipal immunity.
About this firm
Madgett Law, LLC litigates civil rights and police misconduct claims in Minnesota state and federal court, alongside its personal injury and general litigation practice. If a restraint was used on you or on someone in your family and you are trying to work out what the law required, we can look at it with you. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 609.06, subd. 1 (opening clause and clause (1)), subd. 3(a)(1)–(3) and subd. 3(b), and subd. 4; § 609.06 Revisor history and “Recent History” entries (subd. 3 new, 2020 c 1 s 8; subd. 1 amended and subd. 4 new, 2024); Minn. Stat. § 609.066, subd. 1 (peace officer definition cross-reference), subd. 2(a) and 2(a)(1)(i)–(iii), and subd. 3; Minn. Stat. § 626.8434, subds. 1, 2(a)–(c), and 3; Minn. Stat. § 626.8452, subd. 1a(a)(3), (b), and (c); Minn. Stat. § 626.8475(a)–(c); Laws 2020, 2d Spec. Sess., ch. 1 (H.F. No. 1), act title. All statutory text retrieved from the Office of the Revisor of Statutes, revisor.mn.gov.
This article is general information about Minnesota law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and it does not promise or imply any particular outcome. Statutes change; verify the current text before relying on it.