Minnesota Employment Guide is a publication of Madgett Law, LLC. It is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether any of it applies to your job turns on facts this site cannot know. This is attorney advertising.

Defined by statute

Disability (Human Rights Act)

Any condition or characteristic that renders a person a disabled person, which the Minnesota Human Rights Act reaches by four routes — actual impairment, a record of one, being regarded as having one, and, since 2024, an episodic or remitted impairment.

Nothing on this page is advice about your job, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota employment attorney can do that — and several of the deadlines described on this site are short enough that waiting is itself a decision.

Also called: disabled person; disability under the MHRA.

“Disability” means any condition or characteristic that renders a person a disabled person. A disabled person is any person who (1) has a physical, sensory, or mental impairment which materially limits one or more major life activities; (2) has a record of such an impairment; (3) is regarded as having such an impairment; or (4) has an impairment that is episodic or in remission and would materially limit a major life activity when active.

Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 12. Clause (4) is new — Laws 2024, ch. 105, § 2, added it — and it closes the gap for conditions that come and go. Clause (3) is the one people miss — an employer that acts on a belief you are impaired has acted on a disability whether or not the belief was right.

Where this comes up

Sources checked September 8, 2026. Citations independently verified against the primary source September 8, 2026.

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