Most people fired in Minnesota walk out the door with a cardboard box and a one-line explanation, and they never learn that state law gives them the right to something better: the employer’s reason for the termination, in writing, required by statute to be truthful, delivered on a statutory deadline. The right sits in Minn. Stat. § 181.933, it costs nothing to invoke, and in my practice the letter it produces is worth more than almost anything else a terminated employee can obtain in the first month after a firing. It is discovery you get before you ever sue — before the employer has hired defense counsel, before the story has been workshopped, before anyone has read the personnel file with litigation in mind.
The catch is a short fuse. The employee has 15 working days to ask. Miss it and the right is gone.
Fifteen working days to ask, ten to answer
Section 181.933, subdivision 1, in full:
An employee who has been involuntarily terminated may, within 15 working days following such termination, request in writing that the employer inform the employee of the reason for the termination. Within ten working days following receipt of such request, an employer shall inform the terminated employee in writing of the truthful reason for the termination.
Every operative word earns its place. Involuntarily terminated — the statute covers firings, not resignations, which is one more reason a pressured “resignation” is worth resisting. Working days, not calendar days, on both clocks — a firing on a Friday gives the employee three full weeks of calendar time, but I tell clients to send the request within the first week and treat the cushion as margin for error. In writing on both ends — an oral demand does not trigger the duty, and an oral answer does not discharge it. And truthful — the legislature did not require a reason; it required the truthful reason. That adjective is the whole game, as I explain below.
The definitions section for this cluster of statutes, § 181.931, sweeps broadly: an “employer” is “any person having one or more employees in Minnesota,” including the state and its political subdivisions. There is no small-employer exemption. A two-person shop owes the letter on the same terms as a Fortune 500 company. Independent contractors are excluded from “employee,” which makes the misclassification fight matter here the way it does everywhere else in chapter 181.
Send the request by a method that proves delivery, dated, addressed to the employer, stating plainly: I was involuntarily terminated on [date]; under Minn. Stat. § 181.933 I request that you inform me in writing of the truthful reason for my termination. Two sentences. Then the ten-working-day clock is the employer’s problem.
The immunity clause — and what it does not immunize
Employers reading subdivision 1 always ask the same question: if we put the reason in writing, aren’t we drafting Exhibit A in a defamation suit against ourselves? The legislature answered it in subdivision 2:
No communication of the statement furnished by the employer to the employee under subdivision 1 may be made the subject of any action for libel, slander, or defamation by the employee against the employer.
I read subdivision 2 to bar exactly one thing: a defamation claim built on the § 181.933 statement itself. It does not make the letter inadmissible, it does not immunize the underlying termination decision, and it does not protect statements the employer makes about the employee anywhere else — to coworkers, to prospective employers, to an industry group. The letter cannot be the defamation; it can absolutely be the evidence.
The history explains the clause. In 1986, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, 389 N.W.2d 876 (Minn. 1986), and adopted compelled self-publication defamation: “the publication requirement may be satisfied where the plaintiff was compelled to publish a defamatory statement to a third person if it was foreseeable to the defendant that the plaintiff would be so compelled.” Id. at 888. Four employees fired for “gross insubordination” had to repeat that phrase to prospective employers, and the repetition counted as publication. The court itself worried aloud that without protective doctrine “employers will decline to inform employees of reasons for discharges.” Id. at 890. The legislature’s response came the next session: § 181.933 was enacted in 1987, pairing a right to the reason with immunity for stating it. The statute is a bargain — the employee gets the truth in writing, and the employer gets to write it without buying a Lewis claim. I unpack the Lewis doctrine itself, including what remains of it, in the compelled self-publication article.
One more piece of the 1987 package deserves a footnote in the main text. Section 181.934 — sometimes described as a retaliation provision — is nothing of the kind. It is one sentence directing the Department of Labor and Industry to promulgate rules for notifying employees of their rights under §§ 181.931 to 181.935. The teeth of the cluster live in § 181.935: a civil action with damages and attorney fees for whistleblower violations under § 181.932, and a civil penalty of $25 per day, capped at $750 per employee, against an employer who “failed to notify, as required under section 181.933 or 181.934,” an employee injured by a whistleblower violation. The penalty is modest and tied to the whistleblower context, but its presence tells you how the legislature saw these sections: one integrated scheme. The § 181.933 letter and the Whistleblower Act were built to work together.
Why the letter is discovery you get before you sue
Here is what the letter actually does in a contested case, in the order I use it:
- It locks the story. The employer must commit to the truthful reason within ten working days, in writing, before litigation reshapes memories. When the summary-judgment affidavits two years later recite three reasons the letter never mentioned, that shift is classic pretext evidence in a discrimination or whistleblower case. Courts and juries understand a simple question: if that was the real reason, why wasn’t it in the letter the law required you to write?
- It prices the case. A letter reciting a documented, verifiable reason — the client really did miss 14 shifts — tells me to counsel the client honestly and early. A letter reciting something vague, false, or contradicted by the personnel file tells me the opposite. Either way I learn it in week two, not in month nine of discovery.
- It tests the file. Pair the § 181.933 letter with a personnel-record request under the Personnel Record Review Act — the statute I walked through in the personnel-record article — and you hold both the stated reason and the underlying documentation before drafting a complaint. If the file contains no writeup supporting the letter’s reason, that gap is an argument.
- It matters at the unemployment hearing. Misconduct disputes under the unemployment statutes turn on why the employee was really discharged — ground I covered in the quit-and-misconduct article. An employer arguing “misconduct” to the unemployment judge after writing “position eliminated” in its § 181.933 letter has a document problem it created for itself.
The demand costs a stamp. I know of no comparably priced discovery device anywhere in Minnesota employment law. In short: every involuntarily terminated employee with any doubt about the stated reason should send the request, and should send it in the first week.
The flip side: what a former employer may say to the next one
Section 181.933 governs what the employer must tell the employee. Its neighbor, Minn. Stat. § 181.967, governs what the employer may tell the next employer — and its structure is widely misdescribed. It is not a simple “good-faith immunity.” It is a bar on lawsuits, subject to a demanding escape hatch. Under subdivision 2, no action may be maintained against an employer for disclosing the information the statute lists
unless the employee or former employee demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that: (1) the information was false and defamatory; and (2) the employer knew or should have known the information was false and acted with malicious intent to injure the current or former employee.
Both elements, by clear and convincing evidence. That is a steep climb, and it is meant to be.
What a private employer may disclose in response to a reference request without any authorization, under subdivision 3(a): dates of employment; compensation and wage history; job description and duties; training and education the employer provided; and documented “acts of violence, theft, harassment, or illegal conduct” from the personnel record that resulted in disciplinary action or resignation, together with the employee’s written response — and a disclosure in that fifth category must be in writing with a copy contemporaneously mailed to the employee’s last known address. With the employee’s written authorization, subdivision 3(b) expands the list to written evaluations, written disciplinary warnings from the five years before the authorization, and “written reasons for separation from employment” — again with a contemporaneous copy to the employee identifying what was disclosed and to whom.
Notice what the unauthorized list omits: the reason for separation. A former employer that volunteers “we fired him for stealing” outside a documented subdivision 3(a)(5) disclosure, or hands over the separation reason without written authorization, has stepped outside the statute’s protection and stands on ordinary defamation ground — where the qualified privileges I covered elsewhere may still apply, but the statutory bar does not. And subdivision 6(b) removes the shield entirely for claims under the Human Rights Act: the statute “does not apply to an action involving an alleged violation of chapter 363 or other statute.”
Put the two statutes side by side and the architecture is coherent. The employer must give the employee the truthful reason, immune from defamation liability for that statement. The employer may give the next employer only a defined menu, on defined conditions, behind a high liability bar. Everything outside those channels is at the employer’s own risk.
How I run the sequence
For a terminated employee who calls me inside the window, the first two weeks look like this: day one, the § 181.933 demand goes out by trackable delivery; the same day, the personnel-record request; ten working days later, I have the employer’s committed reason and the file it must be measured against; then — and only then — do I evaluate discrimination, whistleblower, defamation, and unemployment angles against a story the employer can no longer redraft. For employers, my advice is the mirror image: calendar the ten working days, write the letter carefully and truthfully, make it consistent with the personnel file, and understand that this document will be quoted back to you in every forum the dispute ever reaches. The statute forgives neither silence nor spin.
Where Madgett Law fits
Madgett Law, LLC represents Minnesota employees in termination, discrimination, whistleblower, and defamation matters, and counsels employers on separation practices that hold up. If you were fired within the last three weeks, the § 181.933 clock is likely still running — call 612-470-6529 or send us a message today, not next month.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 181.933, subd. 1 (15-working-day written request; employer’s duty to state the truthful reason in writing within ten working days) and subd. 2 (no defamation action on the furnished statement); Minn. Stat. § 181.931, subds. 2–3 (“employee” excludes independent contractors; “employer” means any person having one or more employees in Minnesota, including the state and political subdivisions); Minn. Stat. § 181.934 (rulemaking directive to the Department of Labor and Industry — not a retaliation provision); Minn. Stat. § 181.935(a)–(b) (civil action for § 181.932 violations; $25-per-day, $750-cap penalty for failure to notify under §§ 181.933–.934 an employee injured by a § 181.932 violation); Minn. Stat. § 181.967, subd. 2 (clear-and-convincing falsity-plus-malice standard), subd. 3(a)–(b) (private-employer disclosure lists with and without written authorization, contemporaneous-copy requirements), subd. 6(b) (inapplicable to chapter 363 actions); Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, 389 N.W.2d 876, 888, 890 (Minn. 1986) (compelled self-publication holding; concern that employers would decline to give reasons), verified from the Caselaw Access Project archive. This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice; reading it creates no attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.