The state Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that a central Minnesota judge exceeded his authority when he tried to block at least a half dozen people with felony convictions from voting in the upcoming election.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who supported a petition against the judge's order, celebrated the Appeals Court decision in a post on X Thursday as he extended a welcome "to all who are planning to vote."
The decision comes days before the Nov. 7 election, the first since DFL legislators passed a new law that restores voting rights for people with felony convictions. They're eligible as soon as they are released from incarceration, where before they had to wait until they were off probation and had paid all fines connected to their conviction.
In October, Mille Lacs County Judge Matthew Quinn declared that law "unconstitutional" in a series of unexpected supplemental sentencing orders for at least six individuals on probation with felony convictions. In the identical orders, he said they are prohibited from "registering to vote, or voting, or attempting to vote."
"To do so is a criminal act which can be investigated, charged, and prosecuted in the normal course," Quinn wrote.
The attorney for two individuals prohibited from voting petitioned to block Quinn's orders, a move Ellison's office backed in court. In its ruling, the Appeals Court said Quinn "had no authority to declare a statute unconstitutional ... in a supplemental sentencing order."
A "supplemental sentencing order declaring a legislative act unconstitutional is outside the sentencing authority granted to district courts by the legislature," Chief Judge Susan Segal wrote.
Quinn also exceeded his lawful authority, Segal wrote, "by independently raising and deciding an issue involving the constitutionality of a statute without the issue being raised by a party."
