Non-competes, wages, leave, discrimination, and being fired.
Federal age law starts at 40. Minnesota's covers every adult from 18, at a one-person shop. Its retirement statute is still stuck where Congress was in 1978.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.275 protects a nurse who declines extra hours for patient safety. The Legislature stripped the lawsuit out of the bill in 2002 and switched off the penalty.
Read →Since 1977 Minnesota has voided invention clauses that reach what you build on your own time. The catch is the conditions, and a garage isn't one of them.
Read →Minnesota presumes a first responder's PTSD came from the job. Insurers still usually open with an initial denial. The fight is over the diagnosis, the rebuttal, and the denial letter.
Read →Phipps v. Clark Oil covers an employee fired for refusing to break the law, and nothing else. Minnesota's Supreme Court has refused three times to widen it.
Read →The FCRA makes employers build a five-document paper trail before rejecting you over a background check — and the step they skip is the one you can't see.
Read →Minnesota lets a 14-year-old work eight hours a day until 9 p.m. Federal law caps the same kid at three hours on a school day. A practitioner's read of Minn. Stat. ch. 181A.
Read →Minnesota's occupational safety act lets a retaliated-against employee sue in district court, in front of a jury. Federal law does not. What Minn. Stat. ch. 182 actually hands a worker — and where it stops.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.531 prohibits punishing an employee who declines an employer's political or religious meeting. It doesn't ban the meeting. The state's own poster says so, and the private action expires 90 days after the violation.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.722 was a misrepresentation statute until July 1, 2024. The rewrite dropped the misrepresentation element, added individual liability, and made the penalties recoverable by the worker.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.173 makes a 30-employee Minnesota employer put a starting salary range in every job posting. Then, in the same act, the legislature left it off the commissioner's compliance-order list in § 177.27 and off the private-action list in § 181.171.
Read →Minnesota's pay-history inquiry ban sits inside the Human Rights Act. That means a one-employee threshold, a one-year clock, treble damages, and a mandatory penalty paid to the state.
Read →The word 'nondisparagement' doesn't appear anywhere in the Minnesota Statutes. The Speak Out Act reaches only clauses signed before the dispute arose. The most useful Minnesota provision is a 15-day rescission right in the Human Rights Act that most severance packets never mention.
Read →Minnesota's break law got teeth on January 1, 2026: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and liquidated damages. The 48-hour overtime rule didn't change, and it usually isn't the one that governs.
Read →Minnesota has no statute requiring a vacation or PTO payout. The Supreme Court held § 181.13 is a timing statute, so the employer's own documents decide the case.
Read →Seven Minnesota leaves that have nothing to do with illness: what each one costs an employer, and why the remedy is almost always narrower than the duty.
Read →Since August 1, 2024, a Minnesota employer has to hand over the full credit-card tip with no deduction for processing. And a mandatory service charge is legally a gratuity unless the customer got notice in the right type size.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.145 pays commission salespeople fast and penalizes employers who stall. But it covers independent contractors, not employees, and the penalty clock runs out four years before the contract clock does.
Read →Minnesota reads a handbook one provision at a time. In 2021 the Supreme Court held a general 'this is not a contract' disclaimer was ambiguous and sent the question to a fact-finder.
Read →A fired Minnesota employee has 15 working days to demand the truthful reason for the termination in writing, and the employer then has ten working days to answer.
Read →A Minnesota severance release comes with a 15-day rescission right, a federal 21-day clock for workers 40+, and a short list of claims no employer can buy at any price.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.75 bars an employer from soliciting or requiring 'a polygraph, voice stress analysis, or any test purporting to test the honesty' of an employee or applicant. Those words aren't limited to a machine. And the statute backs them with a misdemeanor, an attorney general injunction, and a private action with fees.
Read →Minnesota defines employment misconduct by statute, then carves ten categories right back out. Most unemployment denials are won or lost inside that list, not on the appeal deadline.
Read →Minnesota conditions a deduction for a broken tool or a till shortage on a writing the employee signs after the loss occurred, or on a court judgment. Any contrary agreement is void, and the remedy is double.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 176.031 makes workers' compensation the employer's exclusive liability. Then it hands the employee of an uninsured employer a choice and strips that employer of the fellow-servant, assumption-of-risk, and contributory-negligence defenses.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 176.82 holds two claims. Subdivision 1 runs against 'any person' and carries fees plus punitive damages up to three times the compensation benefit. Subdivision 2 is a capped one-year-wages claim that never touches an employer with 15 or fewer full-time equivalent employees.
Read →Minnesota lets a fired employee sue over a defamatory statement only the employee ever repeated. But the qualified privilege, the proof bar from Rouse, and a one-sentence statute sink most of these claims before a jury ever sees them.
Read →The 1-hour-per-30-worked rule is the easy part. The real exposure is in the 80-hour carryover bank, the ban on attendance points, and a damages provision that fixes liability at 48 hours a year when the employer has no records.
Read →Section 181.64 bars inducing a worker to relocate by knowingly lying about the job, and § 181.65 adds actual damages plus attorney fees. The limits are where these cases are won or lost.
Read →The accommodation statute people still cite was repealed in 2021. Here's where the duty lives now, why a four-person employer owes it, and what can and can't be counted against the 12-week leave.
Read →Section 197.46 gives a covered veteran a hearing before removal and names mandamus as the remedy — which in Minnesota means a jury-triable civil action that carries a damages judgment.
Read →Minnesota made wage theft a theft offense, but the criminal clause borrows its measuring stick from the wage notice and earnings statements required by § 181.032. The paperwork is the case.
Read →One telephone hearing builds the only record there'll ever be. Minn. Stat. § 268.105 closes it, and every deadline in the appeal path is written in calendar days.
Read →Pickering's balance, Connick's public-concern gate, Garcetti's official-duties rule — and why the Eighth Circuit makes the employer prove the workplace disruption it claims.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.988 makes employee non-competes void and unenforceable, with only two narrow exceptions. But it applies only to contracts and agreements entered into on or after July 1, 2023. Older agreements still get the common-law reasonableness review.
Read →Exempt vs. non-exempt, tips, overtime, and wage theft in Minnesota — what the law actually says, told through everyday scenarios.
Read →In M&K Employee Solutions v. IAM National Pension Fund, a unanimous Court held that withdrawal-liability assumptions don't have to be chosen by the measurement date. Minnesota has one of the most heavily unionized workforces in the country, so this one lands here harder than most places.
Read →Benefits started January 1, 2026, and the first premiums were due April 30. A plain-English guide to the 2026 premium rate, the leave categories, the 20-week cap, and where Minnesota employers most often trip up.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 325C protects information with independent economic value that isn't readily ascertainable and is the subject of reasonable efforts to keep it secret. Exemplary damages up to twice compensatory, attorney's fees that run both ways, and a three-year clock from discovery under § 325C.06.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.723 makes every individual performing building construction services an employee unless they operate as a business entity meeting all fourteen statutory requirements — with penalties up to $10,000 per worker and personal liability for owners.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.988 voids employee non-competes signed on or after July 1, 2023. What's left is ch. 325C and the DTSA, the carve-outs in subd. 1(a), § 181.9881, the sale exception, and the duty of loyalty.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 363A.28, subd. 3(a) gives one year from the occurrence. Then § 363A.33, subd. 1 adds 45- and 90-day windows, § 363A.07, subd. 3 makes the forum choice exclusive, and § 363A.31 gives 15 days to rescind a release. Here's the whole machine, mapped.
Read →Minn. Stat. §§ 181.960–181.966 give an employee the right to review and copy the personnel record on written request — seven working days, no fee — and § 181.963 bars the employer from using record material it left out in a later proceeding, unless the omission wasn't intentional and the employee gets a reasonable chance to review it first.
Read →Under Minn. Stat. §§ 181.950–181.957 an employer may not request or require a drug or alcohol test except as authorized. And nothing is authorized unless it's done pursuant to a written policy meeting § 181.952, subd. 1.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 181.932 protects six categories of conduct. Since the 2013 amendment defining 'good faith' in § 181.931, subd. 4, there's only one state-of-mind question left: was the report knowingly false or reckless?
Read →Minn. Stat. § 364.021 bars a public or private employer from asking about criminal history before the interview. But the direct-relationship standard in § 364.03 and the written-explanation duty in § 364.05 reach only public employment and licensing, and § 364.06, subd. 2(d) makes the private-employer remedy exclusive.
Read →Under Minn. Stat. § 181.13, wages owed a discharged employee are due immediately on written demand, and the employer is in default 24 hours later, with a penalty of one day's average earnings for every day, up to 15. Attorney fees are mandatory.
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