Minnesota Supreme Court race pits Thissen against troubled lawyer Michelle MacDonald

Minnesota Supreme Court elections typically don’t attract much attention, but this year’s race between an incumbent justice and a controversial perennial challenger may be an exception.

Supreme Court Justice Paul Thissen is facing Michelle MacDonald, a family lawyer whose career includes three other Supreme Court bids and multiple disciplinary incidents.

In court documents published last week, a judge recommended MacDonald be placed on professional probation for the second time. This means a MacDonald victory would potentially set up an odd outcome: A Minnesota Supreme Court justice on probation.

Also awkward: The Supreme Court will review the disciplinary recommendation and make a final decision.

Minnesota is one of 38 states whose voters decide who sits on the state’s highest court. It’s not often in the spotlight, but the seven justices are tasked with a number of important responsibilities on the “court of last resort.” They review cases appealed from lower courts, interpret the Minnesota and U.S. Constitution and regulate the state’s legal system.  

In recent years, they’ve made major decisions, including rulings that upheld a Minneapolis ordinance requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, and another that blocked the review of crime victims’ cell phones without cause. 

In other states, corporate and ideological interests have successfully taken over courts with far-reaching consequences. In Wisconsin, for example, the deeply partisan court this year overturned an order by the governor to postpone the April primary, resulting in a pandemic election in which voters stood in line for hours amid stay-at-home orders; and temporarily halted the mailing of absentee ballots to more than 1 million voters. 

Incumbent Paul Thissen

Thissen was appointed to the Supreme Court by then-Gov. Mark Dayton in 2018. Thissen resigned from the Minnesota House of Representatives — where he’d served for 16 years, including a term as speaker of the House — to take the job. Before he became a justice, he worked for a private law firm, providing legal counsel for health care organizations. He also unsuccessfully ran for governor twice.

Thissen said his background in law and government makes him a strong candidate for the Supreme Court. His understanding of the policymaking process is helpful in interpreting state laws, he said, and his experiences working with Minnesotans from diverse backgrounds make him more empathetic to the people who come before the court.

“I have a long history of public service in Minnesota, and I feel like this is an extension of that service,” Thissen said. 

Protecting individual rights and increasing access to legal help, especially for low-income people, people of color and people in rural areas, are Thissen’s top priorities on the Supreme Court, he said. He wants to continue the court’s work to make affordable legal counsel more available, like the pilot project the court recently approved that allows paralegals to give advice on eviction and family law cases.

Thissen said he also wants the Supreme Court to remain “a place where the rule of law is honored, and a court whose decisions are set by law rather than a personal or partisan issue.”

“I think that we should hold our justices and our judges to a high standard of professional and ethical conduct,” he said. “And I think that’s a big distinction between my opponent and me.”

Challenger Michelle MacDonald

MacDonald has 33 years of legal experience, including work as a judge in Hennepin County small claims court. After working as an arbitrator in family and civil court, MacDonald became disillusioned with the family court system and in 2011 started Family Innocence, a nonprofit that aims to help families resolve issues outside of court with mediation and restorative practices.

MacDonald said she would like to see the family court system — which she said is “extremely corrupted” and “shouldn’t exist, legally” — replaced by mediation practices like those used at her nonprofit, except in cases involving violence or abuse. 

MacDonald campaigned for a seat on the Supreme Court in 2014, 2016 and 2018, and she said she is running again to “end the corruption” in the state’s legal system. MacDonald said she believes the court system fails to provide due process, a speedy trial or impartial decision making.

Voters shouldn’t be deterred by her disciplinary record, she said.

“I see my disciplinary proceedings as a badge of honor,” she said. “I’m not going to be muzzled.”

MacDonald could face a year of probation for making “knowingly false statements” about Dakota County Judge David Knutson during an interview with WCCO in October 2018, less than a year after she had been suspended and placed on probation for comments about the same judge, according to court filings. 

MacDonald said the disciplinary case was politically motivated — possibly even “election interference” — and an effort to stop her from speaking out about “corruption.”

“I think (the board) is being exposed for what they really are, and they’re a cover-up organization,” MacDonald said, referring to the state Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility that oversees the discipline system for lawyers. “They pick on attorneys that actually want to help people and change the system.”

MacDonald’s 60-day suspension and two-year probation in 2018 followed her work on the case of Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, a Lakeville woman convicted of six felonies for hiding her daughters from their father for two years. MacDonald sued Knutson, the judge, alleging he wasn’t impartial in the case and acted maliciously against her and Grazzini-Rucki.

A judicial referee determined that MacDonald had “failed to competently represent” Grazzini-Rucki, made false statements about Knutson’s integrity “with reckless disregard for the truth,” and behaved disruptively in the courtroom, resulting in her arrest in court. 

During the WCCO interview in October 2018, MacDonald said court orders are “damaging people and families,” and that Knutson violated Grazzini-Rucki’s rights. In making these statements and others, MacDonald “caused harm to both the public and the legal profession … and also maligned the administration of justice in the state of Minnesota,” according to the disciplinary recommendation.

MacDonald also ran into a fracas during a 2014 run for the state’s highest court. She was acquitted of a drunk driving charge but convicted of obstruction of a legal process, a misdemeanor, for refusing to take a breath test until she could see a judge.

A reminder to voters: The Supreme Court choice is on the back of your ballot, so remember to turn it over.