The Minnesota House of Representatives passed the heavily publicized “SRO fix” bill by a near unanimous vote on Monday afternoon.
After weeks of negotiations between legislators, law enforcement officials and education leaders from across the state, HF3489 was passed on a 124-8 vote. The Senate is expected to pick up the bill on the floor in the coming days.
“Republicans have been asking and calling for this fix since August,” said House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, before the vote on the House floor on Monday. “The delay has been irresponsible, but I am grateful we are in this place and can finally take a vote on it. School resource officers are a valuable resource to the school districts that choose … to have them in their buildings. They serve a great part of keeping our teachers, our students, our staff, and actually keep the community safe.”
Last week, leaders from the Republican and DFL caucuses in both chambers had indicated they found a bipartisan agreement to bill language and that they had received endorsement for the bill from law enforcement leaders.
“The bill before us today clarifies the law regarding the use of force in schools, retaining crucial limitations on practices such as choke holds, and establishing clear standards for the training and deployment of school resource officers,” said Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, who carried the bill in the House. “The goal is to build relationships, not to damage relationships.”
Legislators who voted against the bill on the House floor on Monday were almost exclusively Democrats from either St. Paul or Minneapolis. They include: Aisha Gomez, Hodan Hassan, Sydney Jordan, Mohamud Noor, Maria Isa Perez-Vega, Samantha Sencer-Mura and Jay Xiong. One member from greater Minnesota, Rep. Alicia Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, also joined the ‘no’ voting bloc. None of those legislators rose on the House floor to articulate their opposition to the bill.
The public debate over the issue first surfaced last August when a number of law enforcement agencies across the state began pulling their school resource officers from secondary schools after learning that a new state law regarding the use of force police officers could employ in schools put them in legal jeopardy in certain situations.
The Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association and Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association asked Gov. Tim Walz to call a special session to fix the legislation. Those organizations criticized the new law, which went into effect on Aug. 1, for restricting a school resource officer “from separating those involved in [a] fight or altercation, safely holding them on the floor while trying to calm them down.”
Walz publicly entertained the idea of calling a special session but then opted to wait until the 2024 legislation to make the fix after 44 DFL legislators across the Senate and House wrote a joint letter opposing any fix. Meanwhile, several schools went months without their school resource officers.
The change in law that prohibited the “prone restraint and certain physical holds” was inserted last spring as a provision to an omnibus education finance and policy bill that Gov. Walz signed in May. The “fix” bill exempts schools resource officers from this prohibition.
The bill also would create a model policy for SROs that would be developed by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board by Dec. 31, 2024.
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
