The sign by the register — pay with a card, pay a little more — is the handiwork of one of the very few consumer-pricing statutes in Minnesota that grants a permission rather than imposing a prohibition. Minnesota law says, in so many words, that a business may charge you extra for using a credit card. It is Minn. Stat. § 325G.051, it was written in 1987, and the legislature left it alone for thirty-six years before rewriting subdivision 1 in 2023.
That permission has a hinge, and almost nobody reading the statute notices where it is. The surcharge is lawful because the customer “elects to use a credit or charge card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means.” Take cash off the table and there is nothing left for the customer to avoid. The fee can still be disclosed, still sit under the cap, still meet every condition § 325G.051 attaches — and, as I read the price transparency law, it has become a mandatory fee that belongs inside the advertised price.
So the merchant most likely to be violating Minnesota’s newest pricing statute is the one that read the oldest one carefully and posted the sign.
What the statute permits, and the condition that gets missed
Subdivision 1(a) is a conditional grant. Four conditions, and the first three are keyed to the channel:
(a) A seller or lessor of goods or services doing business in Minnesota may impose a surcharge on transactions in Minnesota with a customer who elects to use a credit or charge card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means, provided:
(1) if the sale or lease of goods or services is processed in person, the seller or lessor informs the customer of the surcharge both orally at the time of sale and by a sign conspicuously posted on the seller’s or lessor’s premises;
(2) if the sale or lease of goods or services is processed through a website or mobile device, the seller or lessor informs the customer of the surcharge by conspicuously posting a surcharge notice during the sale, at the point of sale, on the customer order summary, or on the checkout page of the website;
(3) if the sale or lease of services is processed over the telephone, the seller or lessor informs the customer of the surcharge orally; and
(4) the surcharge does not exceed five percent of the purchase price.
Clause (1) is the one that gets missed, and it is missed because it is conjunctive. In person, the seller must inform the customer both orally at the time of sale and by a sign conspicuously posted on the premises. Not one or the other. A placard at the register and a silent clerk does not satisfy clause (1). Neither does a line printed on the receipt, because a receipt is handed over after the sale, not at it.
Clause (2) is generous by comparison — four acceptable placements online, any one of which will do, and the last of them is the checkout page. Clause (3), the telephone clause, is narrower than it looks: by its terms it reaches a sale or lease “of services.” Goods sold over the telephone are not described in clause (3) at all.
Clause (4) is arithmetic, and nobody does it. Five percent of the purchase price is a ceiling, not a target. On a hypothetical $58 restaurant check the cap is $2.90; a $3.50 “card processing fee” on that check is 6.03 percent and is outside the statute no matter how well it was disclosed.
The statute is indifferent to why the number is what it is — whether the merchant is recovering an acquirer’s cost, rounding up for convenience, or making margin, the only question clause (4) asks is what percentage of the purchase price the surcharge came to.
The surcharge no disclosure can cure
Subdivision 1(b) offers no compliance path. It is a flat bar, and it gets almost no attention:
(b) A seller or lessor of goods or services that establishes and is responsible for the seller or lessor’s own customer credit or charge card may not impose a surcharge on a customer who elects to use that credit or charge card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means.
Read the trigger: the seller “establishes and is responsible for” its own customer card. That is the store card, the branded fuel card, the private-label account a retailer underwrites or stands behind. If a business issues you its own card and then charges you extra for using it, there is no notice that cures it, no cap that saves it, and no disclosure defense. The permission in paragraph (a) simply does not extend to paragraph (b)’s fact pattern.
I read paragraph (b) as an unconditional prohibition, and I think it is the cleanest violation available under this section, because it turns on a single documentary question — whose card is it — rather than on what a clerk did or did not say at a counter months earlier.
When is a “cash discount” a surcharge?
Whenever the discount is not genuinely offered to everyone and not clearly disclosed to everyone. Subdivision 1(c) supplies both the definition and the carve-out:
(c) For purposes of this section “surcharge” means a fee or charge imposed by a seller or lessor upon a customer that increases the price of goods or services to the customer because the customer uses a credit or charge card to purchase or lease the goods or services. The term does not include a discount offered by a seller or lessor to a customer who makes payment for goods or services by cash, check, or similar means not involving a credit or charge card if the discount is offered to all prospective customers and its availability is clearly and conspicuously disclosed to all prospective customers.
The carve-out has two elements and a business has to satisfy both. The discount must be offered to all prospective customers, and its availability must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed to all prospective customers. A program in which the shelf price, the menu price, and the website price are all the card price, and the cash customer finds out at the register that there is a reduction, fails the second element on the statute’s own words.
Calling the program a discount does not make it one. Under subdivision 1(c) it is a surcharge, which means it now has to clear the conjunctive disclosure requirement in (a)(1) and stay under the five percent cap in (a)(4).
The label is the whole fight in this corner of the statute, and the label is decided by disclosure, not by nomenclature.
Who is liable besides the merchant?
Subdivision 1(d) is eleven words:
(d) This subdivision applies to an agent of a seller or lessor.
That sentence reaches the payment processor. A surcharging program is typically installed, configured, and priced by an independent sales organization that programs the terminal, sets the percentage, and supplies the signage. On the statute’s text, that entity is an agent of the seller for purposes of subdivision 1, and the obligations in (a) through (c) run to it. The limit is real: (d) says “this subdivision,” so it attaches to subdivision 1 and not to the penalty in subdivision 2.
What changed in 2023, and when it changed
The 2023 rewrite was substantial, and the Revisor’s recent-history table on the section confirms that it touched subdivision 1 only. Comparing the act against the prior text, 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 57, art. 4, § 19 did six things: it added “or lessor” throughout and limited the grant to a seller “doing business in Minnesota” on “transactions in Minnesota”; it replaced “purchaser” and “buyer” with “customer”; it broadened “credit card” to “credit or charge card”; it added the website-and-mobile clause and the telephone clause as new clauses (2) and (3); it renumbered the five percent cap from (2) to (4); and it added paragraph (d) reaching agents.
The penalty in subdivision 2 was not amended. It is still the 1987 text.
The effective date is not the one most people would guess. Section 19 of article 4 carries no effective-date clause — four other sections in that article do, which is how you know the omission was deliberate. That sends you to the default in Minn. Stat. § 645.02, and § 645.02 has two defaults, not one:
An appropriation act or an act having appropriation items enacted finally at any session of the legislature takes effect at the beginning of the first day of July next following its final enactment, unless a different date is specified in the act.
Chapter 57 of the 2023 session laws is a Department of Commerce budget bill; its article 1 is an appropriations article. The governor approved it on May 24, 2023. So I read the surcharge amendments as effective July 1, 2023, not the August 1 date that governs an ordinary act.
The date matters less than the sequence. Minnesota’s price transparency provision took effect January 1, 2025 — the Attorney General’s own guidance opens with that date — so the surcharge statute had been sitting in its current form for eighteen months when the junk fee law arrived, and the legislature that wrote the newer statute wrote it against the older one.
Who can sue over a bad surcharge?
Here the statute is thinner than its subject matter deserves. Subdivision 2, in full:
A seller who violates this section is subject to a civil penalty of not more than $500 and shall refund the surcharge to each buyer.
Two remedies, no plaintiff. The civil penalty is a penalty — the section does not say who recovers it or in what proceeding. The refund duty is phrased as an obligation the seller owes (“shall refund the surcharge to each buyer”), not as a claim the buyer is given. Nothing in § 325G.051 says a buyer may bring a civil action, and nothing in it awards costs or attorney fees.
Chapter 325G makes that omission look intentional. Seven sections later, in the home solicitation sales provisions, the legislature wrote exactly the thing it did not write here:
Any person injured by a violation of sections 325G.06 to 325G.09 may recover damages, together with costs and disbursements, including reasonable attorney’s fees, and receive other equitable relief as determined by the court.
That is Minn. Stat. § 325G.11, enacted in 1973. And the legislature has done the same thing by reference elsewhere: Minn. Stat. § 325E.31(a) provides that a violator of §§ 325E.27 to 325E.30 “is subject to the penalties and remedies, including a private right of action to recover damages, as provided in section 8.31” — text first enacted in 1987, the same year as § 325G.051, and re-enacted in 2023 in the very same article of the very same act that rewrote the surcharge statute.
The legislature knows how to write a private right of action. It did not write one into § 325G.051.
That is the concession. It is not the end of the analysis.
The private attorney general statute reaches unlisted laws
Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 3a, gives a damages action to “any person injured by a violation of any of the laws referred to in subdivision 1,” together with costs, costs of investigation, and reasonable attorney’s fees. Subdivision 1 is the attorney general’s charter, and its operative words are broader than its list:
The attorney general shall investigate violations of the law of this state respecting unfair, discriminatory, and other unlawful practices in business, commerce, or trade, and specifically, but not exclusively, the Nonprofit Corporation Act (sections 317A.001 to 317A.909), the Act Against Unfair Discrimination and Competition (sections 325D.01 to 325D.07), the Unlawful Trade Practices Act (sections 325D.09 to 325D.16), the Antitrust Act (sections 325D.49 to 325D.66), section 325F.67 and other laws against false or fraudulent advertising, the antidiscrimination acts contained in section 325D.67, the act against monopolization of food products (section 325D.68), the act regulating telephone advertising services (section 325E.39), the Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act (sections 325F.68 to 325F.70), and chapter 53A regulating currency exchanges and assist in the enforcement of those laws as in this section provided.
Chapter 325G is not on that list, and absence from that list has sunk a great many consumer claims. It does not sink this one. On December 6, 2023, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided Findling v. Group Health Plan, Inc., Nos. A21-1518, A21-1527, A21-1528, A21-1530 (Minn. Dec. 6, 2023), holding that a private plaintiff may proceed under § 8.31, subd. 3a, to enforce a records-disclosure provision of the Minnesota Health Records Act that appears nowhere in subdivision 1.
The court’s reasoning is three sentences long and it does all the work. First, slip op. at 7: “The list of 10 specific laws following the broad grant of authority is not exclusive,” citing Morris v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., 386 N.W.2d 233, 236 (Minn. 1986) (“the list of laws set out in subdivision 1 is not intended to be exclusive”). Second, slip op. at 8: “The plain language of section 8.31, subdivisions 1 and 3a, tells us that the set of laws for which an individual can bring a private action under subdivision 3a aligns with the set of laws that the Attorney General is empowered to investigate and enforce under section 8.31.”
Third, and this is the sentence that answers the argument that § 325G.051’s own $500 penalty is the exclusive remedy, slip op. at 17: subdivision 3a “expressly states that it applies ‘[i]n addition to the remedies otherwise provided by law.’” The court then drew the consequence: “That language plainly tells us that the fact that another statute provided a different remedy for the same legal violation does not preclude an individual harmed by the legal violation from also proceeding under section 8.31, subdivision 3a.”
Apply that to § 325G.051 and the question is no longer whether chapter 325G is on a list. The question is whether a statute that governs what a merchant may charge a customer for paying by card, how that charge must be disclosed, and how large it may be, is a law “respecting unfair, discriminatory, and other unlawful practices in business, commerce, or trade.” I read it as one, and I do not think it is close.
Findling also disposed of the argument that subdivision 1 is limited to fraud — it rejected that reading at pages 12–13 of the slip opinion and pointed out that several of the listed statutes require no showing of fraud at all.
The honest limits are two. Findling did not mention § 325G.051 and no Minnesota decision has applied it to that section. And the public benefit requirement survives intact: a § 8.31, subd. 3a claimant is, as the court put it at page 17 of the slip opinion, “stepping into the shoes of the Attorney General and seeking relief on behalf of the broader public,” and the Findling majority said in a footnote, slip op. at 17 n.10 that “the Patients will ultimately have to prove a public benefit to obtain the relief they seek under section 8.31, subdivision 3a.” That rule comes from Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302, 314 (Minn. 2000): the private attorney general statute “applies only to those claimants who demonstrate that their cause of action benefits the public.”
A single mis-disclosed surcharge at one counter on one afternoon is a Ly problem. A terminal configuration applied to every card transaction at every location for two years is not. The mechanics of that showing are in our guide to Minnesota’s private attorney general statute.
The route that does not need Findling at all
Plead the Consumer Fraud Act. Minn. Stat. § 325F.69, subd. 1, reaches the use by any person of any “unfair or unconscionable practice” employed “with the intent that others rely thereon in connection with the sale of any merchandise,” and subdivision 8 defines the standard: an unfair or unconscionable act or practice is one that “(1) offends public policy as established by the statutes, rules, or common law of Minnesota; (2) is unethical, oppressive, or unscrupulous; or (3) is substantially injurious to consumers.”
Section 325G.051 is a Minnesota statute establishing public policy about exactly this charge. A surcharge over the cap, or on the seller’s own card, or with no oral notice at the counter, is conduct that offends it.
That matters because §§ 325F.68 to 325F.70 are on the § 8.31, subd. 1 list, and because the Consumer Fraud Act now carries its own private action at § 325F.70, subd. 3(a), added by 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 52, art. 19, § 15:
In addition to the remedies otherwise provided by law, a consumer injured by a violation of sections 325F.68 to 325F.70, in connection with a sale of merchandise for personal, family, household, or agricultural purposes, may bring a civil action and recover damages, together with costs and disbursements, including costs of investigation and reasonable attorney fees, and receive other equitable relief as determined by the court. An action brought under this section benefits the public.
The last sentence supplies by statute what Ly otherwise makes the plaintiff prove. The trade-off is the definition of “consumer” in subdivision 3(b) — a natural person or family farmer — and the limitation to a sale of merchandise for personal, family, household, or agricultural purposes. A business surcharged on a commercial purchase is not in that lane.
We compare the two acts in detail in the Consumer Fraud Act and deceptive trade practices, and the fee-shifting provisions across Minnesota consumer statutes are collected in our attorney fee shifting map.
| Route | Source of the claim | What it pays | What has to be shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| § 325G.051, subd. 2 | Nothing — the subdivision names no plaintiff | $500 civil penalty; refund of the surcharge | n.a. |
| § 8.31, subd. 3a | Findling — subd. 1’s list “is not exclusive” | Damages, costs, costs of investigation, attorney’s fees | That § 325G.051 is a law respecting unfair or unlawful practices in business, commerce, or trade; plus Ly public benefit |
| § 325F.69 → § 325F.70, subd. 3 | § 325F.69, subd. 8(1) — § 325G.051 as the public policy offended | Damages, costs, costs of investigation, attorney fees | A “consumer” (natural person or family farmer); a sale of merchandise for personal, family, household, or agricultural purposes. Public benefit supplied by statute |
Is a card surcharge a “mandatory fee” under the junk fee law?
Not while cash is a real option — and the Attorney General has said so in print.
Minnesota’s price transparency provision, Minn. Stat. § 325D.44, subd. 1a(a), makes it a deceptive trade practice to advertise, display, or offer “a price for goods or services that does not include all mandatory fees or surcharges.” The legislature used the word surcharges in the operative sentence, and used it again in the definition. Subdivision 1a(b):
(b) For purposes of this subdivision, “mandatory fee” includes but is not limited to a fee or surcharge that:
(1) must be paid in order to purchase the goods or services being advertised;
(2) is not reasonably avoidable by the consumer; or
(3) a reasonable person would expect to be included in the purchase of the goods or services being advertised.
The Attorney General’s five-page “Frequently Asked Questions About Minnesota’s New Price Transparency Law,” revised April 2025, answers the surcharge question head-on, and the condition it attaches is the entire point:
This law does not govern what fees or surcharges a business can charge. It governs how those fees or surcharges are disclosed to consumers. If the credit card surcharge is an optional charge, meaning a consumer could reasonably avoid the surcharge by paying with cash, then this credit card surcharge is not a “mandatory fee” under the law and the surcharge would not need to be included in the total price that is advertised, displayed, or offered. Businesses should be aware, however, of other consumer protection provisions that still apply to such surcharges. So to the extent a business decides to impose such surcharges or fees, its communication of such surcharges or fees must comply with other state consumer protection laws.
That is right, and it tracks the statute. Where a merchant takes cash, the card surcharge fails prong (1) — it is not required in order to purchase anything — and it fails prong (2), because paying cash reasonably avoids it. The FAQ’s closing sentence is the pointer to § 325G.051 and the rest of this article.
I want to emphasize the conditional. The Attorney General’s answer is expressly premised on the consumer being able to “reasonably avoid the surcharge by paying with cash.” It is not a categorical exemption for card surcharges. It is a statement about what happens when cash works.
What changes when the business stops taking cash
Everything, and the merchant does not have to do anything else wrong.
At a card-only counter the consumer cannot elect anything. The surcharge now “must be paid in order to purchase the goods or services being advertised” — prong (1). And it is not “reasonably avoidable by the consumer” — prong (2), because there is no avenue of avoidance left. The prongs are written in the disjunctive, so satisfying one is enough; a cashless surcharge satisfies two, and prong (3), which is where the harder arguments usually live, never has to be reached.
Work the arithmetic on a hypothetical. A cashless counter advertises a sandwich at $18.00 and runs a 3.5 percent card surcharge, posted at the register and announced by the clerk exactly as clause (a)(1) requires. The customer pays $18.63. Section 325G.051 is satisfied in every particular — the notice was oral and posted, the percentage is well under five.
Subdivision 1a(a) is violated on the same facts, because the displayed price of $18.00 does not include a surcharge that every customer must pay. The lawful number to display was $18.63.
Nothing in the exemptions rescues it. Subdivision 1b takes out three categories — certain motor vehicle dealer fees authorized by law, businesses regulated by the Public Utilities Commission and their affiliates, and RESPA settlement services. A card surcharge at a restaurant, a salon, a clinic, or a parking ramp is in none of them. And subdivision 3 of the same section confirms the statutes stack rather than displace one another: “This section does not affect unfair, deceptive, or misleading trade practices otherwise actionable at common law or under other statutes of this state.”
The remedies problem on the price transparency side is a different problem, and a serious one — I worked through it in Minnesota’s junk fee law has no damages remedy. The point here is narrower and it is about liability, not recovery: going cashless converts a permitted surcharge into a pricing violation, automatically, by operation of two statutes that were never drafted to be read together.
What counts toward “five percent of the purchase price”
Minnesota taxes the surcharge.
In Martin v. Commissioner of Revenue, Docket No. 9499-S (Minn. Tax Ct., Small Claims Div., Apr. 25, 2022), the Tax Court granted the Commissioner summary judgment against a sole proprietor who operates Minnesota properties as vacation rentals and who imposed a four percent surcharge on customers who booked by credit card. Reading Minn. Stat. § 297A.61, subd. 7(a)(2), the court treated the surcharge as an expense of the seller and held that it “cannot be deducted from the sales price for purposes of sales and use tax unless it falls within one of the exceptions in subdivision 7(b)” — and held that the only exception the parties invoked, subdivision 7(b)(2), did not reach it.
Two cautions on that order, both of which I think matter more than the holding. It is a Small Claims Division decision, and Minn. Stat. § 271.21, subd. 8, says of such a judgment that it “shall not be considered as judicial precedent and shall have no force or effect in any other case, hearing, or proceeding.”
And § 325G.051 does not define “purchase price,” so whether the five percent cap runs against the pre-tax figure or the taxed total is an open question I have not seen answered anywhere in Minnesota. A merchant surcharging at 4.9 percent should want that answer before someone else asks for it.
I can find no Minnesota decision construing this section
I searched for one and did not find it. Running “325G.051” against every court in CourtListener’s opinion corpus returns five decisions — all of them out-of-state challenges that string-cite Minnesota’s statute alongside other states’ surcharge laws, and none of them a Minnesota court. Narrowing to the Minnesota Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, “325G.051” returns nothing, “credit card surcharge” returns nothing, and “credit or charge card” returns nothing. Controls run in the same session on the same engine confirm the searches work: “325D.44” returns 34 Minnesota decisions and “8.31, subdivision 3a” returns 12.
I state that as the result of my searches and not as a certainty. That corpus has known Minnesota gaps, and an unpublished decision or a district court order construing subdivision 1(c) could easily exist without surfacing. What I can say is that between the 1987 enactment and this writing in September 2026 — thirty-nine years — I have found no Minnesota appellate decision telling a business what “clearly and conspicuously disclosed to all prospective customers” means in a cash discount program, and none telling a consumer what subdivision 2’s refund duty is worth.
What to check, and what to photograph
The receipt is not the notice. Clause (a)(1) requires oral notice “at the time of sale.” If the first you learned of the fee was when you read the printed slip, the in-person condition was not met, whatever the sign at the register said.
Photograph the posted price before you photograph the receipt. The junk fee violation is defined by what was advertised, displayed, or offered. The menu board, the shelf tag, the parking ramp sign, the checkout screen before the fee line appears — that is the evidence, and it is gone the next time the price changes.
Check whether cash was accepted. This is the single fact that decides whether the surcharge belonged inside the advertised price. “Cards only,” “cashless facility,” and a taped-over cash drawer are all the same fact.
Whose card is it. If the card carrying the surcharge is the store’s own, subdivision 1(b) applies and the disclosure analysis never begins.
Do the percentage yourself. Divide the fee by the price, not by the total. A fee computed on a post-tax number is a larger share of the purchase price than the posted rate says it is, which is how a surcharge posted just under the cap lands above it.
Do not wait. Every one of these claims has a deadline, the receipts and the signage that prove it do not keep, and a claim that was strong when the charge posted is worth nothing after the deadline runs.
For most single transactions the amount in dispute belongs in conciliation court, where the filing fee is small and no lawyer is required on either side; the procedure is in our Minnesota conciliation court guide. A terminal configuration applied to thousands of transactions is a different kind of case.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota consumers in deceptive pricing, consumer fraud, landlord-tenant, debt collection, and credit reporting disputes, in state and federal court. If you were charged a card surcharge that was never announced, that exceeded five percent, or that sat outside an advertised price at a business that does not take cash, we can tell you whether a statute reaches it and whether the amount justifies a claim. Call 612-470-6529 or send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 325G.051, subd. 1(a) (conditional permission; in-person oral-plus-sign notice at (a)(1); website and mobile notice at (a)(2); telephone notice for services at (a)(3); five percent cap at (a)(4)), subd. 1(b) (seller’s own customer credit or charge card; unconditional bar), subd. 1(c) (definition of “surcharge”; cash-discount carve-out conditioned on an offer to all prospective customers and clear and conspicuous disclosure to all prospective customers), subd. 1(d) (application to an agent of a seller or lessor), and subd. 2 (civil penalty not more than $500; refund of the surcharge to each buyer); Minn. Stat. § 325G.10 and § 325G.11 (penalties and private damages action, both expressly limited to §§ 325G.06 to 325G.09); Minn. Stat. § 325E.31(a) (express private right of action by reference to § 8.31); 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 57, art. 4, § 19 (2023 amendments to § 325G.051, subd. 1 — “or lessor,” “doing business in Minnesota,” “customer” for “purchaser,” “credit or charge card,” new clauses (2) and (3), renumbered cap at (4), new paragraph (d)), § 9 (amendment to § 325E.31), and §§ 6–7 (amendments to § 325D.44, subds. 1 and 2); 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 57 governor’s approval May 24, 2023 (Minnesota Legislature bill status, S.F. 2744); Minn. Stat. § 645.02 (August 1 default; July 1 default for an appropriation act or an act having appropriation items); Minn. Stat. § 325D.44, subd. 1a(a) (advertised, displayed, or offered price must include all mandatory fees or surcharges), subd. 1a(b)(1)–(3) (definition of “mandatory fee,” disjunctive prongs), subd. 1b(1)–(3) (exemptions), and subd. 3 (other law unaffected); Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 1 (attorney general’s charter; “specifically, but not exclusively” and the ten-statute list) and subd. 3a (private remedies; damages, costs, costs of investigation, attorney’s fees); Minn. Stat. § 325F.69, subd. 1 (unlawful practices) and subd. 8(1)–(3) (standard for an unfair or unconscionable act or practice); Minn. Stat. § 325F.70, subd. 3(a) (private enforcement; “An action brought under this section benefits the public”), subd. 3(b) (definition of “consumer”), and its history line (2023 Minn. Laws ch. 52, art. 19, § 15); Minn. Stat. § 271.21, subd. 8 (Tax Court Small Claims Division judgment is not judicial precedent); Findling v. Group Health Plan, Inc., Nos. A21-1518, A21-1527, A21-1528, A21-1530 (Minn. Dec. 6, 2023) (slip op. at 7 — § 8.31, subd. 1 list is not exclusive; slip op. at 8 — private-action set aligns with the attorney general’s enforcement set; slip op. at 12–13 — subd. 3a not limited to fraud-centered laws; slip op. at 17 — subd. 3a’s “[i]n addition to the remedies otherwise provided by law” defeats an exclusive-remedy argument, and the private plaintiff steps into the shoes of the attorney general; slip op. at 17 n.10 — public benefit must still be proved); Morris v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., 386 N.W.2d 233, 236 (Minn. 1986) (list in subd. 1 not intended to be exclusive); Ly v. Nystrom, 615 N.W.2d 302, 314 (Minn. 2000) (private attorney general statute applies only to claimants who demonstrate a public benefit); Martin v. Commissioner of Revenue, No. 9499-S (Minn. Tax Ct., Small Claims Div., Apr. 25, 2022) (four percent credit card surcharge on vacation rental bookings is an expense of the seller under Minn. Stat. § 297A.61, subd. 7(a)(2), and cannot be deducted from the sales price for sales and use tax purposes); Minnesota Attorney General, “Frequently Asked Questions About Minnesota’s New Price Transparency Law,” revised April 2025, at ag.state.mn.us (opening statement of the January 1, 2025 effective date; the credit card surcharge question and its cash-avoidability condition; the debit card question; and the answer that separate disclosure of mandatory fees before a consumer finalizes a transaction does not comply). This article is general legal information about Minnesota law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no particular outcome is promised or implied.