Legal experts say change to Minnesota Human Rights Act won't protect pedophiles

GOP lawmakers leveled a heavy accusation at the DFL majority during public safety debates in recent days, accusing them of protecting pedophiles — adults who are sexually attracted to children.

A disproportionate amount of debate in the House and Senate over the 500-plus page, $3.5 billion public safety bill focused on the removal of one sentence from the state's Human Rights Act (HRA): "Sexual orientation does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult."

Rep. Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said some may now "interpret the HRA to deem pedophilia as a protected class in Minnesota, which prevents them from being denied employment, housing, education and more."

Jess Braverman, legal director for Gender Justice, a St. Paul nonprofit that has advocated for the change, called GOP complaints "manufactured outrage." To protect pedophiles in the HRA, the Legislature would have to specifically add them as a class, Braverman said.

Mike Steenson, professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, agreed with Braverman. "This doesn't create some sort of broad-based protection for those who prey on minors," he said.

The Minnesota Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, disability, national origin, sex, marital status, familial status, age, sexual orientation and gender identity.

As for the potential for Minnesota judges to find that by removing that language, the Legislature's intent was to protect pedophiles, Steenson said, "I can't imagine any court would interpret it this way."

Earlier this session, Niska, a lawyer, added language to the bill that read: "The physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult is not a protected class under this chapter."

But that sentence was removed from the bill during House-Senate conference committee negotiations and wasn't in the final version of the bill sent to Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday.

Niska accused Democrats of "putting politics ahead of kids and wearing ideological blinders instead of doing what's right."

Braverman and Steenson note that Minnesota statutes already criminalize adult sexual relationships with minors. Pedophilia "falls into a number of categories of criminal conduct, and that's not changing," Braverman said.

Steenson said it was hard to envision a scenario in which an adult in a sexual relationship with a minor could make a claim of discrimination. "I can't imagine what the argument would be if a pedophile walked into a restaurant with a 14-year-old partner and then was refused service," he said.

During the Senate debate late Friday night, a tearful Sen. Nathan Wesenberg, R-Little Falls, invoked Jesus and called the deletion of the language "disgusting." He urged colleagues to vote against the bill "lest the people of our state come to believe that the majority of this body supports protecting pedophilia."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park and a lawyer, rebuffed Wesenberg's claim. "I would really like to put to rest the suggestion, the implication that people who have same-sex or same-gender attractions are pedophiles. That's really what's being hinted at here in this whole discussion," Latz said.

In the House, Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, denounced the GOP arguments and called the language in the act "a poison pill."

Finke, the first transgender legislator in Minnesota, sponsored the bill to remove the language and add gender identity as a protected class, which is now in the public safety bill awaiting the governor's signature. In her first session at the Capitol, she's been verbally attacked both inside and outside the Capitol, with some Republican colleagues threatening to misgender her.

The sentence about pedophilia went into the HRA in 1993 when Minnesota became the first state in the country to add sexual orientation as a protected class after a yearslong push by the late Sen. Allan Spear and former Rep. Karen Clark, both DFL-Minneapolis.

Latz said Spear agreed to add the pedophilia language "to increase the comfort level of some legislators by making it clear the bill would not do some of the things that opponents claimed it would do."

But he said the HRA never did what "bigoted fear-mongering by right-wing activists" claimed it would. The notion that the state is protecting pedophiles is "not a legitimate reading of this statute," Latz said.

Braverman agreed. "We're revisiting the same old tired stereotypes," Braverman said. "It's just never been the case that the Minnesota HRA protects pedophiles."