I’m picturing DFL Representative John Lesch – he of the Capone suits and the junior-high demeanor – apparently believes that “legislative privilege” immunizes one from being a ghastly little entitled jagoff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Minnesota Court of Appeals, to my boundless amazement, disagrees:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n State Rep. John Lesch is not protected by \u201clegislative immunity\u201d in a defamation case brought against him by St. Paul city attorney Lyndsey Olson, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday. If you’re a commoner and you make statement of fact about someone that are false, that can damage their reputation and living, and are done with malicious disregard for fact, it’s actionable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lesch apparnetly believes that being an elected DFLer in a one-party city confers divine right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, there’s not much about any urban DFLers experience that would teach ’em otherwise, under normal circumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So maybe, just maybe, Lesch’s arrogance and stupidity went outside the norm? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lesch, a Democrat who represents part of St. Paul, has sought to dismiss the suit, arguing in part that he has legislative immunity. He will file a petition in the next month with the Minnesota Supreme Court, his attorney Marshall Tanick said.<\/em> If the SCOM rules that “legislative immunity” protects any (DFL) pol’s statement, anywhere, for any reason, no matter what the context, then it is time for someone to take a can of Raid to the whole enterprise. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m picturing DFL Representative John Lesch – he of the Capone suits and the junior-high demeanor – apparently believes that “legislative privilege” immunizes one from being a ghastly little entitled jagoff. The Minnesota Court of Appeals, to my boundless amazement, disagrees: State Rep. John Lesch is not protected by \u201clegislative immunity\u201d in a defamation case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320,255],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mndfl","category-the-racket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71677,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71667\/revisions\/71677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The decision<\/a> allows Olson\u2019s case to proceed.
Olson sued Lesch last year after he sent a letter<\/a> to incoming St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter criticizing her work history and judgment, saying she has a \u201ctrack record of integrity questions and management problems.\u201d
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Appellate Court construed the legislative immunity of legislators extremely narrowly, and we think that it\u2019s more proper to take a broader view of what legislators do,\u201d Tanick said.<\/em>
He said he hopes the Supreme Court decides to take up the case to provide \u201cclarification and guidance\u201d on legislative immunity.<\/em><\/p>
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n