Lawsuit

Three same-sex couples were denied marriage licenses at the Hennepin County Courthouse on Friday, laying the groundwork for a lawsuit to repeal Minnesota’s Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA, passed in 1997, prohibits same-sex couples from marrying and defines marriage as between two members of the opposite sex.

Hennepin County commissioners learned Thursday that they’ll have to pay $500,000 to stop the stink from the county’s downtown garbage burner from entering the new, county-sales-tax-funded, open-air Minnesota Twins stadium next door. It’s exactly the kind of thing environmental activist Leslie Davis predicted when he sued for further environmental study of the Twins’ ballpark plans.

As many as 10 same-sex couples will soon file a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota for the right to marry. It’s a controversial move, one that some in the gay and lesbian community think is ill-timed, but those couples who are putting their money on the line and their lives under a microscope say the time is always right to fight for equality.

I sat down with Doug Benson, founder of the organization Marry Me Minnesota, a nonprofit group that formed last year and that is helping to organize the lawsuit. Benson and his partner are also part of the planned lawsuit.

Wal-Mart “saved money” and — to further shoplift from the discount retail mega-chain’s current advertising slogan — its executives will probably “live better” after today’s $54.3 million settlement of a Minnesota class action lawsuit. The Dakota County District Court case involved allegations that Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores denied wages for training time and didn’t [...]

The Al Franken for Senate campaign announced today it is suing Ramsey County in hopes that a favorable court ruling will compel all Minnesota counties to release the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in last week’s election. Attorney Marc Elias said the campaign may present cases of wrongly rejected absentee ballots to the newly-formed canvassing board that will oversee the recount in the U.S. Senate race between Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Video and more after the jump.

Judge Barbara Neilson dismissed half of Sen. Norm Coleman’s complaint against Al Franken on Monday ruling that Franken’s claim that Coleman lived in “an almost rent-free apartment” paid for by friend Jeff Larson did not violate Minnesota law. Coleman filed the complaint last week with the Office of Administrative Hearings alleging that a Franken campaign [...]

A veteran Minnesota campaign observer tells Brian Lambert that Al Franken’s camp freely tips him on U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman misdeeds but said nada about the Texas lawsuits. Via Lambert to the Slaughter:
Pat Kessler, WCCO’s political reporter, says he’s been approached countless times by the Franken crew over the months of the campaign with hot [...]

An editor’s note in today’s Star Tribune is the latest sign of the newspaper’s squeamishness about its own reporting of what are now two lawsuits alleging back-channel payoffs to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman:

EDITOR’S NOTE
The Democratic Senate [sic] Campaign Committee is running TV ads featuring a Star Tribune reporter questioning Sen. Norm Coleman about a lawsuit noted in this report. The video in the ad was filmed without the knowledge or consent of the Star Tribune.

The original video shows Strib reporter Paul McEnroe trying to ask Coleman about the first lawsuit filed in Texas this week as Coleman left a St. Cloud cafe Wednesday. (See the video here. See the DSCC’s ad after the jump.)

A group of Muslim lawyers told the Washington Times that they will raise money for the two “John Does,

We still haven’t heard the reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s decision in Louis H. Reiter vs. Mary Kiffmeyer, the case involving the Gutknecht petition in lieu of paying a filing fee. Buried deep within the documents the Court considered, however, is at least one interesting tidbit.