Rep. Tom Emmer calls for repeal of Minnesota's trans refuge law after Annunciation shooting
Published in News & Features
MINNEAPOLIS — Rep. Tom Emmer is calling for Minnesota to repeal its transgender refuge law following the deadly Annunciation Catholic Church shooting.
The recent comments from Emmer, the No. 3 Republican in the U.S. House, comes as many conservatives continue to single out the transgender community in the wake of the shooting, blaming the shooter’s mental health as the root cause of the attack.
Law enforcement officials have identified Robin Westman, 23, as the shooter. According to court records, Westman’s mother applied to change her child’s name in 2019 because she identified as female. Westman also identified as as female on her 2023 driver’s license.
Passed in 2023, Minnesota’s transgender refuge law gives protection to transgender people and their families to seek gender affirming care in the state and avoid extradition orders and legal repercussions for doing so. It’s unknown what level of such care Westman could have received.
“We got to respect everyone. We got to have compassion for everyone. But we got to understand that we’ve got some serious mental health issues that are being exacerbated by these types of messages by people like [Gov. Tim Walz] and everybody who supported that law,” Emmer told the New York Post.
Walz signed the transgender refuge bill into law two years ago, Democrats narrowly control the state Senate and the Minnesota House is likely to go back to a tie pending an upcoming special election, meaning any attempt to repeal the state law would likely be dead on arrival.
“They should immediately repeal it, but they won’t,” Emmer continued. “They have been encouraging this type of confusion.”
Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the state’s first transgender lawmaker and the sponsor of the bill, said she is not worried about the threat to repeal Minnesota’s law gaining traction, but she is worried about what the Trump administration may do to roll back transgender protections.
“They can’t do anything to our state laws, but I definitely worry that the federal government is going to take action,” Finke said.
She pointed to a muted response from Republicans about the alleged suspect in the June fatal shooting of former DFL Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.
“We had a massive, horrific political assassination by a white Christian man in June and we did not see this because it’s not useful to them,” she said.
Even if Republicans attempted to repeal the transgender refuge law, questions around the protections under the state’s Human Rights Act would have to be addressed and other case law would likely be on Minnesota’s side, said political science Professor David Schultz.
“We’re also looking at, for example, some of the trans protections are through the human rights amendment, which talks about a whole host of classifications, so is he talking about picking and choosing?” said Schultz. “Does [Emmer] want to repeal all the human rights provisions or single one out? That becomes complicated.”
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