True North Legal“Renee Carlson, general counsel of True North Legal, a legal initiative of Minnesota Family Council, warned that the bill as written will ‘create confusion and increased litigation for the courts, while stripping parents of their fundamental rights, disregarding informed consent and encouraging young children on a dangerous path to serious lifelong biological and medical consequences.'”
Watch here.
Washington Stand writes: “Renee Carlson, general counsel for True North Legal, an initiative of the Minnesota Family Council, criticized the bill’s promotion of abortion and gender identity ideology. ‘Based on elusive claims about access to abortion and with insufficient public notice or debate, the Minnesota legislature and Walz administration created one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the country. Minnesota’s newly elected Democratic trifecta created a fundamental right to abortion by repealing, and thus removing, nearly all health and safety protections in civil and criminal law regulating abortion, impacting women and young girls.’
She continued, ‘Other provisions in the bill reflect an aggressive push by the newly elected majorities in the House and Senate, in concert with Governor Walz and his administration, to force aggressive gender ideology and gender policies on all Minnesotans.'”
Read full article: https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/minnesota-lawmakers-push-abortion-and-gender-ideology-with-passage-of-800page-omnibus
Renee Carlson joined James Dickey of Upper Midwest Law Center to discuss the rapid pace of policy change in Minnesota.
Click here or on the thumbnail above to watch the full episode.
In addition to litigation, True North Legal engages in policy work fighting to protect life, family, and religious freedom in Minnesota. Our work was featured in The Federalist earlier this year.
Cattle and reptiles will have more legal protections in Minnesota than Minnesota’s vulnerable preborn children. Legal penalties for animal cruelty in Minnesota range from misdemeanor up to a felony while there is no criminal penalty for leaving a preborn child to die on a cold metal table,” Renee Carlson, general counsel at True North Legal, said in remarks to the Senate ahead of the vote.
Read more at The Federalist.
Renee Carlson, General Counsel of True North Legal, welcomed former Vice President Mike Pence to Minneapolis on Wednesday. Renee and Vice President Pence addressed leaders and advocates for parental rights in Minnesota, including legislators, school board members, attorneys, policy advisors, and parents.
As Renee put it in her remarks, ““Respecting the rights of parents to direct their child’s education should be the easiest decision schools make – when families flourish, children thrive!” True North Legal is dedicated to protecting and defending the fundamental parental right and responsibility of parents to the upbringing and education of their children. Watch the full event here, or below.
You can also see more coverage at Alpha News.
Watch Renee’s testimony on SF 23 above, or read the full text below.
Madam chair and members,
My name is Renee Carlson. I serve as General Counsel for TNL.
Life isn’t easy. We know this from the testimonies heard today.
Because every person’s story is different, access to trusted counselors is critical for all Minnesotans.
Moreover, counselors and clients should direct the conversations about a client’s counseling experience, not the government.
But SF 23 doesn’t allow either. It stifles personal counseling goals by censoring constitutionally protected speech of licensed counselors, clients, and many others, which is likely to result in a vacuum of care, leaving patients who voluntarily seek counseling without any options.
SF 23’s unconstitutional discrimination based on content and viewpoint permits speech that helps a person change his or her gender identity or embrace same-sex attractions. Yet bans speech, that helps a person address unwanted same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion.
The U.S. Supreme Court has “long protected the First Amendment rights of professionals”—such as therapist and counselors, and signaled that counseling censorship laws such as SF 23 violate these rights and principles regarding free speech.
And, just a few years ago, the 11th circuit court of appeals struck down a FL law with similar yet even narrower language than SF 23, holding it was an infringement on constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment, stating ““People have intense moral, religious, and spiritual views about [counseling related to sexuality and identity]…. And that is exactly why the First
Amendment does not allow communities to determine how their neighbors
may be counseled about matters of sexual orientation or gender.”
Our own 8th Circuit has been clear that speech is not conduct simply because the government says it is.
SF 23’s consumer fraud provision makes this bill the most expansive counseling censorship bill in the country. The bills vague and overly broad language leave counselors, clients, and all others expected to comply with the prohibitions confused about what is actually prohibited.
However, under the proposed bill, faith-based organizations engaging in faith-driven activities could be subjected to severe legal consequences and ruinous lawsuits.
Minnesotans of diverse faith backgrounds will be caught between liability under the law and strong moral convictions.
Further, these provisions are unnecessary, as current Minnesota law already holds licensed professionals accountable.
There is no justification for legislation that violates Minnesotan’s freedom of speech in a very private setting, while imposing severe legal consequences for Minnesotans who simply want to live consistent with their deeply held beliefs.
True North Legal General Counsel Renee Carlson wrote this piece for the Star Tribune‘s Opinion page this week, following the paper’s Editorial Board’s decision to endorse the PRO Act, a radical abortion bill currently being considered by the Minnesota state legislature.
In “Codify abortion rights with ‘PRO Act'” (Jan. 9), the Star Tribune Editorial Board made some astounding claims about the so-called Protect Reproductive Options Act. While the board usually seeks to strike a note of moderation, the PRO Act is one of the most radical abortion bills ever proposed in Minnesota — or indeed, to my knowledge, in any American state.
Following the bill’s first hearing last week, the Editorial Board suggested that PRO Act opponents are the extremists. Let’s talk about that. If opposing the PRO Act is extreme, the Star Tribune must believe that a partial-birth abortion at 40 weeks gestation is perfectly moderate. The board must believe that under no circumstances should the state mandate that a pregnant woman receive unbiased information from her doctor that would help her make an informed choice.
The board must believe that allowing minor girls to get abortions without parental involvement is, again, a moderate and sane position. Abortion would then be one of the very few medical procedures that a minor girl could undergo without parental involvement. Anyone who opposes this is, apparently, an extremist.
To make matters worse, consider the Minnesota Supreme Court’s constitutional interpretation in Doe v. Gomez, which currently provides not only so-called abortion rights, but also the right to have an abortion funded by taxpayers in some circumstances. It follows that if the PRO Act is passed, we may see legal arguments attempting to put Minnesota taxpayers on the hook for a whole host of “reproductive services” guaranteed in the bill — such as “fertility treatment.” We cannot rule out commercial surrogacy, an inherently coercive and troubling practice.
The rushed consideration of the PRO Act (with DFL leaders pushing for passage by the end of January) is an insult to the legislative process, and surely an attempt to sneak this through before Minnesotans discover the true radical significance of this bill. If passed in its current form, it would quite possibly make Minnesota’s abortion laws on par with the most extreme in the nation in some respects.
The PRO Act is out of step with Minnesotans’ values, both those who call themselves pro-life and those who call themselves pro-choice. Even most pro-choice Minnesotans support common-sense protections for women and the ability of the state to regulate abortion after the first trimester, as all recent polling on this issue indicates. The PRO Act would bulldoze over these conscientious pro-choice Minnesotans in service of a radical, “shout your abortion” agenda that brooks no moral hesitation about abortion.
Make no mistake, the PRO Act is not about health care. It is political theater, its status as the first bill introduced in both houses of the Legislature displaying the priorities of DFL leaders, not Minnesotans. In supporting radical bills like the PRO Act, which drastically limits the state’s ability to protect the safety and well-being of women and girls, or indeed regulate abortion in any way, the DFL needs to stop pretending that it is simply enacting the people’s will, or, even more duplicitously, that it is merely codifying into law the “rights” Minnesotans already have.
As should be clear to anyone who reads the bill and thinks about its implications, the PRO Act goes far beyond Doe v. Gomez. Legislators should first explain to Minnesotans precisely what this bill does, and what it doesn’t do. Rather than protecting women and girls, it creates an extreme abortion regime, and then some, in Minnesota.
Gone are the days of abortion moderation, of “safe, legal and rare.” The new DFL majorities, now supported by the voice of the Star Tribune, are putting all their cards on the table for a brave new world in which anyone with moral concerns about abortion is an extremist. This does not represent the views or priorities of Minnesotans.
Renee Carlson is general counsel, True North Legal, an initiative of the Minnesota Family Institute.
From June 2022: Vice President Pence praised the work of True North Legal in a video released by Minnesota Family Council.
True North Legal worked with Vice President Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom, to submit an Amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson, urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Watch our press conference:
Via Alpha News:
A Minnesota-based advocacy group called Mothers Offering Maternal Support (MOMS) has taken action to restore common-sense abortion restrictions for young girls and women, against the wishes of Attorney General Keith Ellison.
The group, which has close to 50 members, filed a new motion on Monday, Nov. 14 in its effort to oppose a ruling made by Ramsey County Judge Thomas Gilligan on July 11.
“Abortion providers now may legally provide secret abortions to minors without providing any notice to parents, and they no longer need share statutorily required information with the minors themselves before allowing non-physicians to perform abortions at any gestational age of the pregnancy,” MOMS said in a memo in support of its motion to intervene.
Gilligan had decreed that, among other things, the state’s 24-hour waiting period for an abortion was unconstitutional, and that minors didn’t need to inform their parents they were seeking an abortion.
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by abortion activists against the state of Minnesota. The attorney general is responsible for defending state law regardless of his personal opinions.
Ellison announced in July that his office would not be appealing the decision, saying an appeal would be unlikely to succeed and thus would be an ineffective use of taxpayer dollars.
But on Oct. 12, his office filed a motion objecting to MOMS’ attempt to intervene in the case, meaning his office will be using taxpayer dollars to oppose their efforts to protect the unborn, according to MOMS.
Teresa Collett, an attorney representing MOMS who teaches law at the University of St. Thomas’ Minneapolis campus, previously called Ellison’s decision to not appeal the ruling a “dereliction of his duty to protect the health and safety of women and young girls.”
She believes Ellison failed to present evidence challenging the claims of the plaintiffs.
“Judge Gilligan’s opinion referenced unrebutted evidence multiple times establishing that the defense was unfamiliar with evidence from nationally recognized experts regarding the value and efficacy of laws requiring parental involvement, informed consent, reflection periods, and physician performance of abortion, suggesting a lack of experience and competence in defending these long-standing laws that were passed with bi-partisan support,” she explained in a statement this week.
MOMS representative Jessica Chastek said it was “shocking” that “the state would refuse to protect bipartisan laws that safeguard women and children from the abortion industry.”
“The mothers in this group share significant concerns about the far-reaching repercussions that this case will have on Minnesota women, as well as young girls and their parents,” she said. “All this time the two-parent notification law hangs in the balance — a law which simply ensures that parents have an opportunity to be engaged and available for our daughters at a time when they need maternal support the most.”
A court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 5.
“The Attorney General’s brief in opposition to this group’s attempt to intervene in the case is due on Dec. 22. That brief will constitute our reply,” a spokesperson told Alpha News.