RobD wrote: Judge Swenson Chief Judge Swanson (Norwegian not Swede) wrote a court order in 2008, stating that it was firearms were banned in court facilities, regardless of a permit to carry.
624.714 Subd. 23. wrote:This section sets forth the complete and exclusive criteria and procedures for the issuance of permits to carry and establishes their nature and scope. No sheriff, police chief, governmental unit, government official, government employee, or other person or body acting under color of law or governmental authority may change, modify, or supplement these criteria or procedures, or limit the exercise of a permit to carry.
They cannot ban carry, and they know it. Most of them have "not welcomed" signs... Zero legal enforceability.
The chief judges have issued sweeping orders, banning guns not just from courtrooms, but from virtually all buildings in which any judicial business is conducted. These orders are unlawful, unenforceable, hypocritical, counter-productive, and offensive.
The legislature clearly foresaw that various governmental officials would, after the passage of concealed-carry reform, attempt to interfere with
citizens recognized rights. To prevent precisely this kind of action, the new law is exquisitely clear: "No government official, government
employee, or other person or body acting under color of law or governmental authority may limit the exercise of a permit to carry." The judges simply
lack any valid legal authority to prohibit Minnesota citizens from carrying a pistol for personal protection into public buildings.
The judges have only two means of putting teeth behind their orders: criminal contempt of court, and trespassing laws.
But contempt of court by its very nature can be found only when a person¹s action interferes with the judicial process, or reasonably threatens to do
so. When a person goes to a government building particularly on business not with the court but with some other division of county government, simply
being there peaceably with a discretely carried pistol has no such potential.
The definition of trespass requires that a person be present where he has no claim of right to be. (Minn. Stat. 609.605.) But citizens inherently have
a claim of right peaceably to enter and conduct business in public facilities, and judges have no power to extinguish that right, absent disorderly or disruptive conduct. Simply carrying a gun cannot be considered disorderly or disruptive; the legislature has explicitly declared not only that such carrying is a personal right, but that having citizens armed in public accomplishes compelling state interests.
While Minnesota’s government is divided into three co-equal branches, the legal doctrine of Separation of Powers means the Judicial Branch has exclusive authority over matters of judicial administration and judicial officers, and judges historically have had the power to maintain order within their own courts. There is no specific statutory authority for judges to designate buildings as part of a “courthouse complex,”
So again I say: Activist Judges have initiated their judicial orders as a response to the law -- and in apparent disregard of it -- and none have been challenged.......yet!