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: double damages; equal amount as liquidated damages.
Chapters 177 and 181 of Minnesota Statutes use “liquidated damages” without defining it. A full-text search of the Revisor’s official chapter files for chapter 177 and chapter 181 on September 8, 2026 returns six uses in chapter 177 and five in chapter 181, and no definition in either. What the sections supply instead is an amount. In the private minimum-wage and overtime action, an employer is liable for the unpaid amount “less any amount the employer or contractor is able to establish was actually paid to the employee and for an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” Minn. Stat. § 177.27, subd. 8. The rest-break section is built the same way: an employer that denies breaks owes the break time at the regular rate “plus an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” Minn. Stat. § 177.253, subd. 3.
This site uses the phrase only in that statutory sense — a doubling written into the remedy — and not in its contract-law sense of a sum the parties agreed in advance to treat as the measure of a breach.
Where this comes up
- Minnesota Puts Your Rate of Pay in a Signed Document at the Start of Employment — and Gives You Three Ways to Enforce It
- Minnesota's break rules got numbers on January 1, 2026 — and being salaried is not what makes you exempt from overtime
- Your Last Paycheck in Minnesota: The 24-Hour Clock Does Not Start Until You Demand It in Writing
Sources checked September 8, 2026. Citations independently verified against the primary source September 8, 2026.