Minnesota Anti-SLAPP Statute

What SLAPP Means

SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. That is the expansion the Minnesota Supreme Court used in Leiendecker v. Asian Women United of Minnesota, 895 N.W.2d 623 (Minn. 2017), and the one the Minnesota Court of Appeals used again when it described the current act as “a uniform anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute” in J&D Dental v. Hou, 26 N.W.3d 491 (Minn. Ct. App. 2025).

A SLAPP is a lawsuit filed less to win than to make speaking expensive. The Minnesota statutes themselves never use the acronym. The act’s own name is the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, and Minn. Stat. § 554.17 directs that it “must be broadly construed and applied to protect the exercise of the right of freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble and petition, and the right of association, guaranteed by the United States Constitution or Minnesota Constitution.”

What Speech the Act Covers

The old Minnesota statute immunized “[l]awful conduct or speech that is genuinely aimed in whole or in part at procuring favorable government action,” and only “unless the conduct or speech constitutes a tort or a violation of a person’s constitutional rights.” 1994 Minn. Laws ch. 566, § 3 (former Minn. Stat. § 554.03, repealed 2024). Lobbying a city council was the classic covered act. The current act reaches much further. Under Minn. Stat. § 554.08, paragraph (b), sections 554.07 to 554.19 apply to a civil claim against you based on your:

• “communication in a legislative, executive, judicial, administrative, or other governmental proceeding”;
• “communication on an issue under consideration or review” in such a proceeding; or
• “exercise of the right of freedom of speech or of the press, the right to assemble or petition, or the right of association, guaranteed by the United States Constitution or the Minnesota Constitution on a matter of public concern.”

Statements you make at a city council meeting fall in the first or second category. Literature you circulate opposing a development project the city is reviewing falls in the second or third. The third category, section 554.08, paragraph (b), clause (3), requires no government proceeding, but it does require an exercise of the constitutional rights it names on a matter of public concern, so a newsletter, an article, or a post can fall within it when both parts are satisfied and no exclusion in paragraph (c) applies.

Coverage is not unlimited. Paragraph (c) of the same section removes twelve categories of claims from the act, including claims against a governmental unit or its employees acting in an official capacity, claims against a person primarily engaged in the business of selling or leasing goods or services arising from a communication related to that sale or lease, real property possession, use, recovery, and quiet title claims, bodily injury, wrongful death, and survival claims along with statements made regarding such an action, unless those claims involve damage to reputation, insurance claims, common law fraud, family and harassment order matters, most employment and labor claims, consumer protection claims under chapters 325F and 325G, and any claim brought under federal law. Paragraph (d) then pulls the goods-or-services, common law fraud, and consumer protection carve-outs back into coverage when the claim arises from newsgathering and publishing, or from consumer opinions, complaints, reviews, and business ratings.

Read those two paragraphs together before you count on the act. A claim against a neighbor based on statements opposing a project can fall inside paragraph (b), while paragraph (c), clause (5), which is written by reference to “a civil suit brought to establish or declare real property possessory rights, use of real property, recovery of real property, quiet title to real property, or related claims relating to real property,” can pull the title and land use claims between the same parties out of the act. Coverage is not the outcome: a covered claim is dismissed only if the burdens in section 554.13, paragraph (a), are also met.

The Special Motion and Its 60-Day Deadline

The vehicle is a special motion for expedited relief. Under Minn. Stat. § 554.09, you may file it “[n]ot later than 60 days after” you are served “with a complaint, crossclaim, counterclaim, third-party claim, or other pleading that asserts a cause of action to which sections 554.07 to 554.19 apply, or at a later time on a showing of good cause.” Two details matter. Minn. Stat. § 554.09 lists a crossclaim, a counterclaim, and a third-party claim alongside a complaint, so you do not have to be the original defendant to use the motion, though the exclusions in section 554.08(c) still limit which claims it reaches. And 60 days is short: if you are served over something you published, that deadline is the first thing to calendar.

Filing the motion stops the case. Under Minn. Stat. § 554.10, paragraph (a), “all other proceedings between the moving party and responding party, including discovery and a pending hearing or motion, are stayed.” Discovery or a hearing involving a different party is stayed only if you ask for it and the court finds the ruling would adjudicate, or the discovery would relate to, an issue material to your motion. The stay runs until the court rules and the 30-day appeal window closes, and an appeal stays proceedings between all parties until the appeal concludes.

The stay has holes you should know about. The court may allow limited discovery when a party shows that specific information is necessary to establish whether a burden under section 554.13 has been met and is not reasonably available otherwise. A motion for costs and fees under section 554.16 is not stayed, a party may still dismiss or sever a claim voluntarily, and the court may for good cause hear an unrelated motion or a motion for an injunction against an imminent threat to public health or safety.

How the Court Decides the Motion

Minn. Stat. § 554.12 directs the court to “consider the pleadings, the motion, any reply or response to the motion, and any evidence that could be considered in ruling on a motion for summary judgment under Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure 56.03.” Under that section, the court rules on a summary judgment record.

Minn. Stat. § 554.13, paragraph (a), then splits the burdens. The court dismisses the claim with prejudice if all three of these hold:

1. You, as the moving party, establish under section 554.08(b) that the act applies;
2. The responding party fails to establish under section 554.08(c) that the act does not apply; and
3. Either the responding party “fails to establish a prima facie case as to each essential element of the cause of action,” or you establish that the responding party “failed to state a cause of action upon which relief can be granted” or that “there is no genuine issue as to any material fact” and you are “entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”

Compare that to ordinary summary judgment. Under Minn. R. Civ. P. 56.01, the court “shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law,” so a genuine issue of material fact defeats the motion. Minn. Stat. § 554.13(a)(3)(ii)(B) borrows that same test. The other two routes do not: section 554.13(a)(3)(i) turns on whether the responding party establishes a prima facie case as to each essential element, and section 554.13(a)(3)(ii)(A) turns on failure to state a cause of action upon which relief can be granted, which is the standard of Minn. R. Civ. P. 12.02(e). A fact dispute alone therefore does not always defeat the motion. If the party opposing your motion lacks the facts to respond, Minn. R. Civ. P. 56.04 lets it show by affidavit that it cannot present facts essential to its opposition and ask the court to defer or deny the motion, allow time for discovery, or issue another appropriate order. That is the summary judgment counterpart to the limited discovery the anti-SLAPP stay allows.

The act also puts deadlines on the court. Under Minn. Stat. § 554.14, the court “shall rule on a motion under section 554.09 not later than 60 days after a hearing under section 554.11.” That ruling deadline, the 60-day filing window, and the 30-day appeal window are what make the relief expedited.

Fees, Appeal, and What Filing Costs You

Fee shifting is the reason the motion is worth bringing, and it runs both directions. Minn. Stat. § 554.16 requires the court to award “court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and reasonable litigation expenses related to the motion” to the moving party who prevails, and to the responding party who prevails only if the court finds the motion “was frivolous or filed solely with intent to delay the proceeding.”

A plaintiff cannot escape that exposure by walking away. Under Minn. Stat. § 554.13, paragraphs (b) and (c), a voluntary dismissal without prejudice does not affect your right to a ruling on the motion and to seek costs and fees, and a voluntary dismissal with prejudice establishes for fee purposes that you prevailed.

If the motion is denied, you do not have to litigate to final judgment before you get review. Minn. Stat. § 554.15 gives a moving party an appeal “as a matter of right from an order denying, in whole or in part, a motion under section 554.09,” filed “not later than 30 days after entry of the order.” Note the limit: that appeal of right belongs to the moving party and runs from a denial. A party appealing a grant of the motion has no section 554.15 appeal of right and needs a valid certification of a final partial judgment under Minn. R. Civ. P. 54.02. In Quinlan v. Fraser, No. A25-1084 (Minn. Ct. App. Aug. 25, 2025), where the district court had granted the motion, the Court of Appeals held the Rule 54.02 certification was an abuse of discretion and dismissed the appeal.

Bringing the motion does not cost you your other defenses. Minn. Stat. § 554.20 provides that a special motion for expedited relief “is not meant to waive a defense or preclude the filing of another pleading or motion regarding the cause of action.” The cost that does exist is the fee exposure in section 554.16(2) if the responding party prevails on the motion and the court finds the motion frivolous or filed solely to delay.

How Minnesota Courts Have Applied the Act

Minnesota appellate law under the act is about sixteen months old. I located four published Court of Appeals decisions construing it, and a fifth, Quinlan v. Fraser, that dismissed an appeal on certification grounds without reaching the act’s substance. I checked the Minnesota State Law Library opinion database through September 8, 2026. Two further decisions applying the act issued on August 3, 2026, both nonprecedential, so the published law described here is unchanged. The Minnesota Supreme Court has issued no opinion in either case now under review, so confirm review status before you rely on the two decisions flagged below. Quinlan and Anderson are cited here to their slip opinions.

Cook v. Trimble, 22 N.W.3d 196 (Minn. Ct. App. 2025), review granted (Minn. Aug. 12, 2025), was the first. It set the standard of review: “Because UPEPA provides an accelerated procedure for obtaining rulings under standards articulated in Minn. R. Civ. P. 12.02(e) and 56, we conclude that it is appropriate to apply the same de novo review that we apply to decisions under those rules.” The same decision holds that because this is a uniform act, Minnesota courts may rely on decisions from other states that adopted it as persuasive authority, citing Minn. Stat. § 645.22. That matters while Minnesota’s own case law is thin. The Minnesota Supreme Court granted review in Cook on August 12, 2025, as J&D Dental records in citing it, and Anderson v. Anderson, No. A25-1075 (Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 27, 2026), still cited Cook as “rev. granted (Aug. 12, 2025)” with no supreme court disposition noted. A docket search of the Minnesota State Law Library opinion database on September 8, 2026 returns only the Court of Appeals decision under file number A24-1486, so review remains pending.

J&D Dental v. Hou, 26 N.W.3d 491 (Minn. Ct. App. 2025), supplies the test for the third coverage category. Whether an action is based on speech “on a matter of public concern” is decided “on a case-by-case basis given the totality of circumstances, taking into consideration the content, form, and context of the speech, as well as any other pertinent factors.” The court held that Google reviews of a dental practice were not speech on a matter of public concern and affirmed the denial of the special motion. An online review is not automatically inside the act.

Paragon Restorations, LLC v. Robinet Productions, LLC, 31 N.W.3d 218 (Minn. Ct. App. 2025), review granted (Minn. Mar. 25, 2026), addresses a reading of the consumer-review provision that a business owner might otherwise take, and its holding is now before the Minnesota Supreme Court, which as of September 8, 2026 had issued no opinion under file number A25-0826. In an action based on speech that is not in, or on an issue under consideration or review in, a governmental proceeding, a moving party must still establish public concern under section 554.08(b)(3) even when the action relates to consumer opinions, complaints, or business ratings under section 554.08(d)(2). Where the speech is in such a proceeding, coverage rests on section 554.08(b)(1) or (b)(2) and no public concern showing is required.

Anderson v. Anderson, No. A25-1075 (Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 27, 2026), is the most recent published decision I located. It holds that a statement in a report to a state licensing board that initiates an investigation is a “communication in a . . . governmental proceeding” under section 554.08(b)(1), so claims based on that statement can be met with a special motion. The court affirmed the grant of the motion. Anderson also reached a jury-trial challenge to the current act and concluded that “UPEPA is constitutional as applied by the district court here,” reasoning that “[u]nlike Minnesota’s previous anti-SLAPP statute, UPEPA does not require district courts to make factual findings.”

Why Minnesota Rewrote Its Anti-SLAPP Law

Minnesota’s original anti-SLAPP statute, Minn. Stat. §§ 554.01 to 554.05, dated to 1994. It immunized lawful conduct or speech genuinely aimed at procuring favorable government action, unless the conduct or speech constituted a tort or a violation of a person’s constitutional rights, and Minn. Stat. § 554.02 supplied the procedure: the responding party carried the burdens of production and persuasion, and the court had to grant the motion and dismiss the claim unless it found that the responding party produced clear and convincing evidence that the moving party’s acts were not immune.

In Leiendecker v. Asian Women United of Minnesota, 895 N.W.2d 623 (Minn. 2017), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that procedure “unconstitutional as applied to claims at law alleging torts.” Sinuon and Lawrence Leiendecker sued Asian Women United of Minnesota, alleging that two of the organization’s previous lawsuits against them constituted malicious prosecution. The organization moved to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP statute. The district court found that the Leiendeckers fell short of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the organization’s acts were not immunized, but concluded that section 554.02 violated their jury-trial right under Minn. Const. art. I, § 4, and denied the motion. The Supreme Court took the case on accelerated review and affirmed.

The defect was specific. “Clauses 2 and 3 violate the responding party’s right to a jury trial in two ways as applied to actions at law alleging torts. First, they transfer the jury’s fact-finding role to the district court. Second, they require the responding party to meet a higher burden of proof before t[r]ial (clear and convincing evidence) than it would have to meet at trial (preponderance of the evidence).” Because those clauses were “inseparable from the remainder of the section,” section 554.02 “provides no procedure for courts to determine whether a lawsuit violates the substantive prohibition of Minn. Stat. § 554.03,” and the court concluded that “Minn. Stat. § 554.02 is unconstitutional as applied to claims at law alleging torts.”

Three limits on that holding are worth keeping straight, because the decision is often read more broadly than it reads. The ruling was as applied, not facial: the court denied the Leiendeckers’ own petition for accelerated review on facial unconstitutionality. It reached tort claims at law only, and the court said that because “only one claim remains in this action, a tort claim for malicious prosecution, we do not need to decide whether the anti-SLAPP law is unconstitutional as applied to alleged violations of a person’s constitutional rights.” And the substantive immunity survived: “Nor are Minnesota’s substantive immunities affected by our holding . . . . The Legislature can immunize a category of people from lawsuits, but it cannot interpose the district court as the fact-finder in actions at law.”

That last sentence is the design constraint the current act had to satisfy, and it explains why the act screens claims on a prima facie showing and a summary judgment record instead of a pretrial finding of fact. The Court of Appeals tested that design in Anderson v. Anderson, concluding that “UPEPA is constitutional as applied by the district court here” because it “does not require district courts to make factual findings.”

An earlier round in the same litigation is often confused with the 2017 decision. In Leiendecker v. Asian Women United of Minnesota, 848 N.W.2d 224 (Minn. 2014), the court reversed and remanded, holding that a party responding to an anti-SLAPP motion had to produce evidence rather than rest on the allegations of its complaint, and it declined at that point to decide the jury-trial question. The Leiendeckers lost that round and won the constitutional question three years later.

Contemporary news coverage of the 2017 decision:

• Anti-SLAPP law perishes at Supreme Court
• Minnesota’s SLAPP law is slapped down, and the impact is likely to be profound

Which Law Governs Your Case

The 2024 Legislature repealed all seven sections of the original act: 554.01, 554.02, 554.03, 554.04, 554.045, 554.05, and 554.06. See 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 123, art. 18, § 16. Article 18, § 17 makes the article “effective the day following final enactment,” and the governor signed the bill on May 24, 2024, so the changeover date is May 25, 2024. The article “applies to a civil action pending on or commenced on or after that date,” which means it reached cases that were already on file.

The dividing line is set by Minn. Stat. § 554.19: sections 554.07 to 554.19 “do not affect a cause of action asserted before May 25, 2024, in a civil action or a motion under Minnesota Statutes 2022, sections 554.01 to 554.06, regarding the cause of action.” So the current act leaves a cause of action asserted before May 25, 2024 in such an action or motion untouched, and Leiendecker held section 554.02 unconstitutional as applied to claims at law alleging torts in that group. For everything else, 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 123, art. 18, § 17 applies the article to “a civil action pending on or commenced on or after that date.”

One citation note. The act’s short-title section names sections 554.07 to 554.19, but the same 2024 article also enacted section 554.20. See 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 123, art. 18, §§ 1, 14. If you work only from the short-title range, you will miss the section that tells you filing the special motion waives none of your other defenses.

If you are served with a lawsuit over something you said, published, or filed with a government body, the 60-day clock in section 554.09 is the first date to protect, and the exclusions in section 554.08(c) are the first thing to check.