Most Minnesota Employment Statutes Never Say the Word Jury — Where They Are Silent, the Answer Comes From the Constitution and Rule 38.01

The question this page answers

Who finds the facts. Not which building the case goes to — that is the forum map — but who, inside the forum, decides what happened: twelve strangers, one judge, one administrative law judge, or one arbitrator.

The answer is not written into most of the statutes an employee sues under. Of the eight Minnesota sections and the one chapter searched for this page, exactly one uses the word. Every cell in the table below is either a quotation from the section named or a report of what a word-boundary search of that section’s posted text returns.

The word does turn up elsewhere in Minnesota’s employment statutes, and the nearest one is worth naming so that it is not mistaken for a counterexample. Minn. Stat. § 593.50, subd. 1, protects the job of an employee who is summoned — an employer “shall not deprive an employee of employment, or threaten or otherwise coerce the employee with respect to employment status, because the employee receives a summons, responds thereto, serves as a juror, or attends court for prospective jury service.” That is about serving on someone else’s jury. It says nothing about who finds the facts in a case of your own, which is the question below, and it is worked through on the civic leave page. No count is offered here of every Minnesota statute that uses the word; the table below reports eight sections and one chapter, each named.

The table

Ten rows. Three say the word. Seven are silences, and each silence is a report of a search of that section’s or that chapter’s posted text on September 10, 2026, not a claim about Minnesota law.

Why the silences are not the end of the question

A statute that does not mention a jury has not abolished one. In Minnesota the right has two other sources, and they operate whether or not the statute you are suing under says anything.

The constitution. Article I, section 4 of the Minnesota Constitution:

The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate, and shall extend to all cases at law without regard to the amount in controversy. A jury trial may be waived by the parties in all cases in the manner prescribed by law. The legislature may provide that the agreement of five-sixths of a jury in a civil action or proceeding, after not less than six hours’ deliberation, is a sufficient verdict. The legislature may provide for the number of jurors in a civil action or proceeding, provided that a jury have at least six members.

Two phrases in the first sentence carry the weight. The right extends “to all cases at law” — which is a category, not a list of statutes — and it does so “without regard to the amount in controversy.”

The rules of civil procedure. Minn. R. Civ. P. 38.01, titled “Right Preserved,” is one sentence:

In actions for the recovery of money only, or of specific real or personal property, the issues of fact shall be tried by a jury, unless a jury trial is waived or a reference is ordered.

Rule 39.01 supplies the default the other way: “Issues of fact not submitted to a jury as provided in Rule 38 shall be tried by the court.” And Rule 39.02 adds two mechanisms that exist for the cases in between — in an action not triable of right by a jury, “the court, upon motion or upon its own initiative, may try an issue with an advisory jury, or the court, with the consent of both parties, may order a trial with a jury whose verdict has the same effect as if trial by jury had been a matter of right.”

Read Rule 38.01 next to the silent rows above. “[A]ctions for the recovery of money only” is a description of what is being asked for, which is why the relief a complaint requests can matter more to this question than the statute the complaint is brought under.

Waiver, and the thing almost everyone gets backwards

Minn. R. Civ. P. 38.02 lists the ways the right is given up:

In actions arising on contract, and by permission of the court in other actions, any party thereto may waive a jury trial by:

(a) failing to appear at the trial;

(b) written consent, by the party or the party’s attorney, filed with the court administrator; or

(c) oral consent in open court, entered in the minutes.

Neither the failure to file any document requesting a jury trial nor the failure to pay a jury fee shall be deemed a waiver of the right to a jury trial.

Three places where the answer is structural rather than optional

An administrative contested case. Where a statute sends the matter to an administrative law judge, that judge finds the facts. Minn. Stat. § 363A.29 and Minn. Stat. § 182.669 both do this, and neither mentions a jury anywhere. Section 182.669, subd. 1, is the clearer of the two about what the ALJ does: the judge may “order payment to the employee of back pay and compensatory damages,” may order “rehiring of the employee; reinstatement of the employee’s former position, fringe benefits, and seniority rights; and other appropriate relief,” and may order “payment to the commissioner or to the employee of costs, disbursements, witness fees, and attorney fees.”

Certiorari review. Unemployment is the cleanest example on the site of a claim with no trial in it at all. The evidentiary proceeding is the unemployment law judge’s hearing under Minn. Stat. § 268.105, subd. 1; reconsideration under subd. 2 goes back to the same judge; and subd. 7(a) sends the result to the Court of Appeals on a writ. That is review of a record. The consequences of that structure are the whole argument of the unemployment hearing page.

Arbitration. The Minnesota Revised Uniform Arbitration Act allocates the decision to the arbitrator and reserves one gateway question for a court. Section 572B.06(b) gives the court “whether an agreement to arbitrate exists or a controversy is subject to an agreement to arbitrate,” and paragraph (c) sends the rest the other way: an arbitrator decides “whether a condition precedent to arbitrability has been fulfilled and whether a contract containing a valid agreement to arbitrate is enforceable.” What an arbitration clause does and does not take away, including the 2022 federal statute that gives one election back, is on the arbitration page.

The federal side, and one asymmetry worth naming

The two federal provisions in the table were written differently, and the difference is visible in the text.

42 U.S.C. § 1981a(c) conditions the jury on the relief sought: it applies “[i]f a complaining party seeks compensatory or punitive damages under this section,” and paragraph (a)(1) makes the section available only against a respondent “who engaged in unlawful intentional discrimination (not an employment practice that is unlawful because of its disparate impact)” and only “provided that the complaining party cannot recover under section 1981 of this title.”

29 U.S.C. § 626(c)(2) does not condition it that way:

In an action brought under paragraph (1), a person shall be entitled to a trial by jury of any issue of fact in any such action for recovery of amounts owing as a result of a violation of this chapter, regardless of whether equitable relief is sought by any party in such action.

“[R]egardless of whether equitable relief is sought by any party” is the clause to notice. The age statute settles by text a question that other statutes leave to the character of the relief requested.

Currency

The Revisor publishes the 2025 Minnesota Statutes. Table 2 was queried one exact section at a time, for 2025 and for 2026, for §§ 363A.33, 363A.29, 181.935, 176.82, 182.669, 268.105, 177.27, 181.171, 572B.15, and 593.50. One 2026 record appears in the whole set: § 363A.29, subdivision 1, amended by Laws 2026, ch. 97, art. 13, § 1. This page cites § 363A.29 for the administrative route and for the absence of the word “jury,” and quotes subdivision 3, not subdivision 1. The act itself was retrieved and read with its strike-and-insert markup intact: article 13, section 1, strikes “, except that” and inserts a period, inserts “decide within 30 days whether to” before “forward the request for hearing,” strikes “Office” and inserts “Court” of Administrative Hearings, and strikes the venue sentence in full. It introduces neither “jury” nor “trial,” so the count above holds against the amended text as well as the posted text. That amendment and its effective date are treated on the forum map and the MDHR charge page. Section 177.27 returns a 2025 record for subdivision 5 (Laws 2025, 1st Special Session, ch. 6, art. 5, § 6); this page quotes subdivision 8, whose most recent record is Laws 2023, ch. 53, art. 10, § 3, and the posted text carries it. Sections 363A.33, 181.935, 176.82, 182.669, 268.105, 181.171, 572B.15, and 593.50 return no 2025 or 2026 record; § 593.50’s History line ends at “2024 c 123 art 13 s 6,” and its subd. 1 was last amended by Laws 2024, ch. 123, art. 13, § 6.

One name in a quotation is already out of date on the Revisor’s own page. Minn. Stat. § 182.669, subd. 1, as posted, refers a matter to “the Office of Administrative Hearings.” Laws 2025, ch. 39, art. 2, § 68, is a revisor instruction directing that the term “Office of Administrative Hearings” be changed to “Court of Administrative Hearings” wherever it appears in Minnesota Statutes, and the Revisor’s own note on Minn. Stat. § 14.48 records that the change “will be implemented in the 2026 Statutes.” This page quotes the posted 2025 text, which is what the Revisor currently publishes. The rename and its date are worked through on the forum map.

Minn. R. Civ. P. 38 and 39 were retrieved from the Revisor’s court-rules pages on September 10, 2026. Rule 38.02 carries “(Amended effective March 1, 1994.)”; Rule 38.03 is printed as “repealed, effective January 1, 1992.” The Minnesota Constitution, article I, section 4, is printed with “[Amended, November 8, 1988].” The two federal sections were retrieved from the Legal Information Institute the same day.

One methodological note, because the counts above are falsifiable. Every “0 occurrences” in this page is a word-boundary search — jury as a whole word — run against the section body as posted by the Revisor, from the section heading through the line before the History line, with zero-width characters stripped first. A substring search would have reported a false positive in Minn. Stat. § 176.82, whose subdivision 2 contains the word “preinjury.”

What this page does not do

It reports which statutes name a fact-finder and which do not, and it names the two Minnesota sources — a constitutional provision and a court rule — that operate where a statute is silent. It does not decide whether any particular claim is a case at law, whether a particular complaint seeks money only, or who would try a particular set of facts. Those questions turn on the claim pleaded and the relief requested. Which forum a claim starts in is the forum map; what each forum can order is on what the Human Rights Act can award and the whistleblower remedies page.