Star Tribune
After Senate confirmation, Judge Jeffrey Bryan will be Minnesota’s first Latino federal jurist
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday cleared the way for Minnesota’s first Latino federal jurist, confirming state Appeals Court Judge Jeffrey Bryan’s nomination for the federal bench in a 49-46 vote.
The historic confirmation makes Bryan, 47, the third Minnesota federal judge appointed by President Joe Biden, and it advanced out of the Senate with just weeks to spare and a still-packed agenda on Capitol Hill. Bryan replaces former Chief U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who remains on the bench and will now assume senior status.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in an interview Tuesday that she spoke with Bryan moments after the Senate vote: “He’s happy and he’s ready to get to work tomorrow.”
Bryan’s July nomination gained bipartisan support, in part because Klobuchar highlighted his record both as a state judge and federal prosecutor. Before Gov. Tim Walz selected Bryan for the Minnesota Court of Appeals in 2019, Bryan authored nearly 200 decisions as a Ramsey County District Court judge and was reversed just six times. He also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Minneapolis for six years and prosecuted a nationwide cocaine trafficking network that involved some 350 defendants.
“It matters in a moment in our country’s history where there’s so much vitriolic rhetoric and so much divide to have judges that are highly qualified, that are dignified and are well respected,” Klobuchar said Tuesday.
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who alongside Klobuchar included Bryan among a list of nominees recommended by a judicial selection committee created by the senators, called Bryan’s confirmation Tuesday a “testament to his considerable experience and commitment to the rule of law.”
Bryan was twice a finalist for openings on the Minnesota Supreme Court dating back to 2018. He has been married for 20 years to Liz Kramer, who is the state’s solicitor general in Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office.
Bryan served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, from 2002 to 2003. He received his juris doctorate from Yale Law School in 2002 and graduated from the University of Texas in 1998.
“Judge Bryan brings to our bench a wealth of experience, as a law clerk, private practitioner, prosecutor, state trial judge, and state appellate judge,” Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said after Bryan’s confirmation. “He is extremely well qualified, and we are thrilled to welcome him back to the ‘federal family.'”
Bryan is the 31st Latino to be appointed to a federal court by Biden — the most by any president in one term, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who tracks judicial selection nationally. Tobias described Bryan as a “highly experienced, mainstream judge” and was surprised that the vote was as close as it was given Bryan’s “exceptional qualifications and his impressive confirmation process.”
“Unfortunately, he is one of many Biden judicial nominees for whom relatively few GOP senators have cast yes votes,” Tobias said. “The limited bipartisanship may be explained by the increasingly partisan and politicized federal judicial selection process and lock step voting by Republicans.”
Many residents in the apartments next to the proposed nightclub are visiting workers such as travel nurses or farm laborers, he said. “It makes no sense to have a nightclub that has concerts next to a place where people need to rest to work in the community,” Zuleger said.
He has said that the company also partners with addiction centers and women’s shelters to house Willmar’s most vulnerable residents, and some of these tenants would be too close for comfort to the new nightclub.
Instead of a nightclub, the site should be used for a Somali community center where children from the nearby apartments can play, Zuleger said. Willmar, a city of about 21,000 people, is about 24% Hispanic and 11% Black, with 16% of the city born overseas, double the average rate in the rest of Minnesota. About 43% of the company’s tenants are Somali, and Zuleger called them his “best-paying renters.”
But Doug Fenstra, the real estate agent helping sell the property at 951 High Av., said he had never heard about the possibility of a Somali community center before Zuleger brought up the idea at an October planning commission meeting.
On Wednesday, the planning commission deliberated whether a nightclub would fit the character of the neighborhood. They noted that there was already a brewery in the area.
They passed a motion granting the conditional-use permit.
“DHS and our state and federal partners have seen evidence that kickbacks are happening in Minnesota,” Inspector General Kulani Moti said in a statement. “That’s why we brought an anti-kickback proposal to the Minnesota Legislature last session. We will continue to work with the Legislature next session on ways to strengthen the integrity of our public programs.”
Nuway Alliance, one of the state’s largest nonprofit substance use disorder treatment providers, pays up to $700 a month for someone’s housing while they are in intensive outpatient treatment, the organization’s website states. The site lists dozens of sober housing programs clients can choose from.
Nuway leaders said they got an inquiry from the government about two and a half years ago indicating they are conducting a civil investigation into the housing model.
But officials with the nonprofit said in an email they believe what they are doing is legal and clients need it. More than 600 people are using their assistance to stay in recovery residences, Nuway officials stated. They said having a safe, supportive place to stay is particularly important for the vulnerable people they serve, more than half of whom reported being homeless in the six months before they started treatment.
Health plans knew about, approved and even lauded their program, Nuway leaders said, noting that health insurer UCare even gave it an award.
“The state of Minnesota has been fully aware of our program for a decade,” the organization said. “Since payors are fully aware of, and support the program, we struggle to see how anyone could argue it is improper, let alone fraudulent.”
Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.
Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.
“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.
Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.
Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.
Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.
Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.
The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.
