Twenty-Nine Municipal Immunities, and Two of Them Are Doors to Everything Else

Count them. Minn. Stat. § 466.03 carries thirty-one numbered subdivisions. Subdivision 1 is the scope provision, not an exception. Subdivision 2 has been repealed since 1987 and reads, in the current edition, “MS 1986 [Repealed, 1987 c 346 s 18].”

That leaves 29 subdivisions that define exceptions: 3, 4, 5, 6, 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, 6e, 6f, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25.

The number is worth getting right, and it is also worth not trusting. Two of the twenty-nine — subdivisions 7 and 15 — do not describe a category of claim at all. They incorporate other law by reference. Which means § 466.03 is not a list of twenty-nine immunities. It is a list of twenty-seven, plus a pointer to every other immunity statute in Minnesota, plus the entire exclusion list from the State’s own tort claims act.

This article is about that map. The 180-day notice, the damages cap, and the insurance waiver that can undo the cap are in our companion piece, against a Minnesota city, the deadline that ends your case is not the statute of limitations. Here the question is narrower: which claims chapter 466 removes, and what removal actually does.

What happens to a claim that lands in an exception?

It does not fall back to ordinary negligence. Subdivision 1 is two sentences and the second one is the whole architecture:

Section 466.02 does not apply to any claim enumerated in this section. As to any such claim every municipality shall be liable only in accordance with the applicable statute and where there is no such statute, every municipality shall be immune from liability.

Read that against § 466.02, which states the default: “Subject to the limitations of sections 466.01 to 466.15, every municipality is subject to liability for its torts and those of its officers, employees and agents acting within the scope of their employment or duties whether arising out of a governmental or proprietary function.”

So chapter 466 sets up a binary. Inside § 466.02, a municipality is liable like anyone else. Inside § 466.03, it is liable only as some other statute makes it liable — and if no statute does, not at all.

This is the sequencing error that costs cases. A plaintiff who concedes that conduct falls within an enumerated exception and then argues “but they were still negligent” has already lost. The negligence question is gone. The only surviving question is whether a different statute imposes liability on these facts. That is a research question about the rest of the Minnesota Statutes, and it has to be answered before the immunity is conceded, not after.

Why is the shortest subdivision the one that decides cases?

Subdivision 6 is twenty-five words:

Any claim based upon the performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty, whether or not the discretion is abused.

Three features of that sentence, and then an honest boundary.

It reaches inaction as well as action. “[T]he performance or the failure to exercise or perform.” A municipality that never decided anything is inside the subdivision on the same terms as one that decided badly.

Abuse is not an exit. “[W]hether or not the discretion is abused.” A plaintiff who proves the decision was unreasonable has proved something the subdivision expressly says is irrelevant. That phrase forecloses the most natural argument a plaintiff wants to make.

It names no actor. Compare subdivision 5, which is limited to “an act or omission of an officer or employee.” Subdivision 6 says only “[a]ny claim based upon the performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty.” Nothing in the text ties it to a particular person’s decision.

And here is the boundary this article will not cross. Neither § 466.03 nor the Act’s definitions section, § 466.01, defines “discretionary function or duty” — the word “discretion” does not appear in § 466.01 at all. Minnesota courts have drawn a line between the kinds of decisions the subdivision protects and the kinds it does not, and that line is judge-made, fact-intensive, and the subject of a substantial body of decisional law. That case law is not cited or summarized here, and nothing in this article should be read as stating where the line falls. What the statutory text supports is narrower and still useful: the subdivision is broad on its face, it survives an abuse of discretion, and the fight over it is a fight about characterizing the conduct — not about whether the conduct was careful.

Which is why the practical work happens in discovery rather than in briefing. Whether a decision was made at all, by whom, when, on what record, and under what policy is what determines how the conduct gets characterized. If those facts are not developed, the characterization is made on the municipality’s version of them.

Why does subdivision 5 require due care and subdivision 6 not?

Because they protect different things, and the difference is one clause.

Subdivision 5, “Execution of statute”:

Any claim based upon an act or omission of an officer or employee, exercising due care, in the execution of a valid or invalid statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule.

The immunity for carrying out a statute is conditional on due care. The immunity for exercising discretion is not. A municipal employee enforcing an ordinance carelessly is outside subdivision 5 by its own terms; a municipality exercising discretion carelessly is inside subdivision 6 by its own terms.

Note also what subdivision 5 does not require: that the statute be valid. It covers execution of “a valid or invalid statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule.” An employee who enforces an ordinance later held unlawful, with due care, is covered. The invalidity of the rule is not the plaintiff’s route in — the absence of due care is.

The trespasser floor: six subdivisions, one idea

A recurring structural device runs through the property-related immunities, and it is the most commonly missed feature of § 466.03. Six subdivisions preserve liability at the level a trespasser could reach against a private landowner:

Three things to take from that table.

The floor is not the same everywhere. Subdivision 6f preserves the standard owed to trespassing children, which is a different and generally more demanding standard than the one owed to trespassers generally. Subdivision 23(b)(2) goes further still and preserves “any existing duty owed by the school district” — language that is not a trespasser floor at all.

Subdivision 6e’s floor is subordinated to subdivision 23. The parks immunity preserves trespasser-level liability “except as provided in subdivision 23,” so on school property made available for public recreation, subdivision 23 governs — and subdivision 23 carries its own, broader preservation. Which subdivision applies to a given piece of ground is therefore a threshold question with a real consequence.

And the floor is a pleading decision. When one of these six applies, the case is not over; it has been converted into a case about whether the municipality’s conduct would expose a private landowner to a trespasser. That is a narrow theory, and it has to be pleaded and proved as such. Related recreational-use questions arise under Minnesota’s recreational land use statutes, and the snow-and-ice immunity in subdivision 4 — which turns on whether the sidewalk abuts a publicly owned building or parking lot — is discussed in Minnesota premises liability for snow and ice.

The two subdivisions that make the list open-ended

Subdivision 7, “Other immunity”:

Any claim against a municipality as to which the municipality is immune from liability by the provisions of any other statute.

Subdivision 15, “Section 3.736-like claim”:

Any claim against a municipality, if the same claim would be excluded under section 3.736, if brought against the state.

Subdivision 7 means the immunity analysis cannot be completed inside chapter 466. Any statute anywhere in Minnesota law that immunizes a municipality is imported by this one sentence.

Subdivision 15 is larger still. Section 3.736, subdivision 3 sets out eighteen lettered exclusions, (a) through (r), under which the State and its employees are not liable — and the subdivision opens with this:

Without intent to preclude the courts from finding additional cases where the state and its employees should not, in equity and good conscience, pay compensation for personal injuries or property losses, the legislature declares that the state and its employees are not liable for the following losses:

So the list § 466.03, subd. 15 imports is itself expressly non-exhaustive, and says so in its first clause. Whether an exclusion a court finds under that preamble is one under which a claim “would be excluded under section 3.736” is a construction question this article does not answer. But the shape of the problem is plain: you cannot count the immunities available to a Minnesota municipality by counting subdivisions of § 466.03.

The quiet giant: subdivision 8

Among the twenty-nine, one is almost never discussed and removes an enormous field:

Any claim for a loss other than injury to or loss of property or personal injury or death.

Three categories of loss are carved out of the exception and so remain inside § 466.02’s ordinary liability rule — injury to or loss of property, personal injury, and death. Everything else is excepted out. A claim for purely economic loss against a municipality, a claim for reputational harm, a claim for lost business opportunity: each is, on the face of subdivision 8, a “loss other than” the three enumerated categories, and each therefore falls under subdivision 1’s rule — liable only as another statute provides, and otherwise immune.

Where the boundary of “personal injury” itself runs is a further question the subdivision does not answer. Emotional harm unaccompanied by physical injury is the obvious test case, and § 466.03 supplies no definition of “personal injury” — so whether such a claim is inside the protected three or outside them is a question of construction governed by authority not cited here, not something the text settles.

For a personal injury practice this subdivision is usually a non-issue. For anyone bringing a business, land use, permitting, or records claim against a city, it is the first provision to read, not the last.

Why are there two unimproved-property immunities and two DUI ones?

Because § 466.03 has been amended by more than twenty-five session laws since 1963, and nobody has ever consolidated it. Two pairs are functionally duplicative on the face of the text:

• Subdivision 6a (“Driving under the influence; custody of motor vehicle”): “Any claim for which recovery is prohibited by section 169A.48, subdivision 2.” Subdivision 14 (“Arrestee’s motor vehicle; care and custody”): “Any claim for a loss for which recovery is prohibited by section 169A.48, subdivision 2.” Same cross-reference, two subdivision numbers.
• Subdivision 6b (“Unimproved property”): “Any claim based upon the condition of unimproved real property owned by the municipality.” Subdivision 13 (“Unimproved realty, old mines”) repeats it and then defines the term, extending it to “land that is owned or administered by the municipality that contains idled or abandoned mine pits or shafts, and appurtenances, fixtures, and attachments to land that the municipality has neither affixed nor improved.”

The practical point is not tidiness. It is that an immunity argument citing only subdivision 6b has not addressed subdivision 13’s definition, and a response addressing only one of a duplicated pair leaves the other unanswered. Read both members of each pair before briefing either.

The Revisor’s history line for § 466.03 lists more than twenty-five session laws, running from Laws 1963, ch. 798, § 3 through Laws 2024, ch. 80, art. 2, § 74 and Laws 2024, ch. 115, art. 16, § 41. Subdivision 6d in the current edition points at chapter 142B and § 142B.41 — cross-references that did not read that way a few years ago. This is a section that changes, and the version that matters is the one in force when the claim arose.

What to do

1. Run § 466.03 before valuing the claim, not after the notice goes out. Subdivision 1 means an exception is not a defense to be overcome; it is the end of the negligence claim unless a different statute supplies liability.
2. If an exception applies, go find the other statute. That is the only question subdivision 1 leaves open, and it is a research question about the rest of the code.
3. Read both members of the duplicated pairs — 6a with 14, 6b with 13.
4. On any property claim, check the six trespasser-floor subdivisions and plead the preserved theory expressly if one applies. Note that 6f preserves the trespassing-children standard and 23(b)(2) preserves “any existing duty owed by the school district.”
5. Do not stop at chapter 466. Subdivision 7 imports every other municipal immunity statute; subdivision 15 imports the eighteen exclusions in § 3.736, subd. 3.
6. Develop the decision record early on any discretionary-function case — who decided, when, on what information, under what policy. The characterization of the conduct is what the subdivision turns on, and it will be characterized on whatever record exists.
7. Check the version of § 466.03 in force when the claim arose. The section has been amended repeatedly, most recently in 2024.

The observation

Section 466.03 is titled “Exceptions,” and the title is doing a lot of quiet work. An exception implies a rule that mostly holds, with a defined set of departures from it. Twenty-nine subdivisions, two of which incorporate every other immunity in Minnesota law and an eighteen-item list that declares itself incomplete, is not a set of departures. It is a second rule.

The Legislature did something unusual in subdivision 1: it said out loud what falling into an exception means. A claim inside § 466.03 is not sent back to the common law; it is sent to whatever statute happens to cover it, and to immunity if none does. Most immunity statutes leave that consequence implicit. This one wrote it down, which is a courtesy — and which is why the very first question in a case against a Minnesota city is not whether the entity was careless but whether any statute in the code makes it answerable for this kind of carelessness.

The answer is often yes. But it is never the negligence claim you started with.

Madgett Law, LLC handles Minnesota injury claims against cities, counties, school districts, and other public entities, including statutory immunity analysis under Minn. Stat. § 466.03, notice of claim under § 466.05, the damages cap under § 466.04, and claims against the State under § 3.736. If your injury involved public property or a public employee, the immunity and the notice questions both have to be answered early. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 466.03 (2025), “Exceptions” — the full section was retrieved and every subdivision reviewed. The section contains thirty-one subdivision labels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, 6e, 6f, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. Subdivision 1 is the scope provision and subdivision 2 appears as “MS 1986 [Repealed, 1987 c 346 s 18],” leaving 29 subdivisions that define exceptions. Provisions relied on: subd. 1 (both sentences, including “As to any such claim every municipality shall be liable only in accordance with the applicable statute and where there is no such statute, every municipality shall be immune from liability.”); subd. 4 (snow and ice, including the abutting publicly owned building or parking lot condition); subd. 5 (“Any claim based upon an act or omission of an officer or employee, exercising due care, in the execution of a valid or invalid statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule.”); subd. 6 (“Any claim based upon the performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty, whether or not the discretion is abused.”); subd. 6a and subd. 14 (both keyed to § 169A.48, subd. 2); subd. 6b and subd. 13 (unimproved real property, with subd. 13’s definition); subd. 6e (parks and recreation areas, including the trespasser sentence and its “except as provided in subdivision 23” clause); subd. 6f (beach or pool equipment, including paragraph (b)’s three-condition duty to warn trespassers and paragraph (c)’s trespassing-children preservation); subd. 7 (“Any claim against a municipality as to which the municipality is immune from liability by the provisions of any other statute.”); subd. 8 (“Any claim for a loss other than injury to or loss of property or personal injury or death.”); subd. 15 (“Any claim against a municipality, if the same claim would be excluded under section 3.736, if brought against the state.”); subd. 16, subd. 20, subd. 22, and subd. 23 (each quoted for its trespasser-level preservation, and subd. 23(b)(2) for “reduces any existing duty owed by the school district”). Minn. Stat. § 466.02 (2025) (default liability, quoted in full). Minn. Stat. § 466.01 (2025) (definitions; the section contains subdivisions 1 through 6 — Municipality; Governing body of a town, school district; Release, hazardous substance; subdivisions 4 and 5, both shown as “MS 1996 [Repealed, 1997 c 7 art 1 s 140]”; and Employee, officer, or agent — and the word “discretion” does not appear anywhere in the section). Minn. Stat. § 3.736, subd. 3 (2025) (opening declaration, quoted verbatim, and eighteen lettered exclusions (a) through (r), counted from the retrieved text). Revisor’s history line for § 466.03, ending at “2024 c 80 art 2 s 74; 2024 c 115 art 16 s 41.” Currency: the § 466.03 page was retrieved as raw HTML and contained zero occurrences of “2026” — no pending-amendment banner. All statutory text from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, 2025 Minnesota Statutes. This article cites no case law. The meaning of “discretionary function or duty” under subdivision 6 is governed by Minnesota decisional law that is deliberately neither cited nor summarized here; nothing above states where Minnesota courts draw that line. Three further questions are identified rather than answered: whether an exclusion a court finds under the opening clause of § 3.736, subd. 3 is imported by § 466.03, subd. 15; what other statutes supply liability for a claim that falls within an enumerated exception; and where the boundary of “personal injury” runs for purposes of subd. 8, which § 466.03 does not define. This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether any immunity applies depends on the facts, the entity, and the version of the statute in force when the claim arose. No outcome is promised or implied.