A Minnesota employer may say far more in a reference than dates of employment — including documented theft, harassment, or violence — and § 181.967 is a shield for the employer, not a gag rule

The section does not restrict a reference; it limits what you can sue over

Minn. Stat. § 181.967 is titled “Employment references,” and the first thing to notice is what its operative subdivision is aimed at. Subdivision 2 is headed “Causes of action limited,” and it reads:

No action may be maintained against an employer by an employee or former employee for the disclosure of information listed in subdivisions 3 to 5 about the employee to a prospective employer or employment agency as provided under this section, unless the employee or former employee demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence that:

(1) the information was false and defamatory; and

(2) the employer knew or should have known the information was false and acted with malicious intent to injure the current or former employee.

That is a liability shield, not a speech restriction. It does not tell an employer what it may say. It tells a court when an action about what was said may be maintained, and it sets the bar where the subdivision sets it: two conjunctive elements, each proved “by clear and convincing evidence.” Truth defeats it at element (1). An honest mistake defeats it at element (2), which requires both that the employer knew or should have known the information was false and that it “acted with malicious intent to injure.”

The five categories, and the notice that comes with the fifth

Subdivision 3(a) opens with a condition that is easy to read past — the shield attaches to “the disclosure of the following information by a private employer in response to a request for the information”:

(1) dates of employment;

(2) compensation and wage history;

(3) job description and duties;

(4) training and education provided by the employer; and

(5) acts of violence, theft, harassment, or illegal conduct documented in the personnel record that resulted in disciplinary action or resignation and the employee’s written response, if any, contained in the employee’s personnel record.

Clause (5) carries three internal limits, and each of them is a fact the employer has to be able to show. The conduct must be documented in the personnel record. It must have resulted in disciplinary action or resignation. And the disclosure carries the employee’s own written response if the personnel record contains one. The subdivision then adds a delivery requirement in its own sentence:

A disclosure under clause (5) must be in writing with a copy sent contemporaneously by regular mail to the employee’s last known address.

So a Minnesota employee who is the subject of a clause (5) disclosure is supposed to receive a copy of it, by mail, at the same time it goes out. The subdivision states that requirement in mandatory terms — a clause (5) disclosure “must be in writing with a copy sent contemporaneously by regular mail” — and attaches no stated consequence to a failure to send it. What a court would do with a clause (5) disclosure made without the mailing is [UNVERIFIED] — no source retrieved for this page decides it.

The three categories that need your signature

Subdivision 3(b) is a separate list, available only “[w]ith the written authorization of the current or former employee,” and only for a written disclosure: written evaluations conducted before separation, “written disciplinary warnings and actions in the five years before the date of the authorization,” and “written reasons for separation from employment” — the first two of which also carry the employee’s written response from the personnel record, if any. The employer’s obligation runs the same way as under clause (5), and further:

The employer must contemporaneously provide the employee or former employee with a copy of information disclosed under this paragraph and to whom it was disclosed by mailing the information to the employee or former employee.

Not only the content but the recipient. Paragraph (c) closes the loop on the other side: “A prospective employer or employment agency shall not disclose written information received under this section without the written authorization of the employee.”

Two other subdivisions extend the same structure elsewhere. Subdivision 4 applies the subdivision 2 limitation to a public employer’s disclosure of “all public personnel data” and, with the employee’s written consent, to two categories of what that subdivision calls “private personnel data under section 13.43” — written evaluations conducted before separation and written reasons for separation. Chapter 13 was not retrieved for this page; the reference above is § 181.967’s own cross-reference, quoted as it appears. Subdivision 5 covers a school district superintendent’s or charter school administrator’s disclosure to another district or charter school of data “relating to acts of violence toward or inappropriate sexual contact with a student that resulted in disciplinary action,” and carries the same contemporaneous-mailing requirement.

What subdivision 6 leaves outside the section

Subdivision 6 is three sentences and each one gives something back.

(a) This section does not affect the availability of other limitations on liability under common law.

(b) This section does not apply to an action involving an alleged violation of chapter 363 or other statute.

(c) This section does not diminish or impair the rights of a person under a collective bargaining agreement.

Paragraph (a) preserves whatever limitations on liability the common law supplies — among them the qualified privilege an employer relies on for statements about a former employee. That privilege is case law, and it, how it is lost, and the separate Minnesota doctrine of compelled self-publication are worked through in the compelled self-publication guide rather than here.

Paragraph (b) is the important boundary in the other direction: the section “does not apply to an action involving an alleged violation of chapter 363 or other statute.” A retaliation or discrimination claim under the Human Rights Act is not a claim the subdivision 2 shield is addressed to, and neither is a claim under another statute. Nothing in that conclusion turns on which chapter number the paragraph names: the Human Rights Act is a statute, so the “or other statute” clause reaches a claim under it either way.

The cross-reference itself has a wrinkle worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Section 181.967’s History line is “2004 c 137 s 3” — the section was enacted in 2004, and the posted text still points at chapter 363. The revisor’s page for chapter 363 now carries a table of sections in which no entry carries operative text: nineteen are renumbering pointers — § 363.031, for example, shows “[Renumbered 363A.31]” — ten read “Subdivisions renumbered, repealed, or no longer in effect,” five are repeals such as § 363.07’s “[Repealed, 1967 c 897 s 29],” and one, § 363.075, reads “[Deleted, 1995 c 233 art 2 s 56].” And § 363A.01 provides that “[t]his chapter shall be known as the ‘Minnesota Human Rights Act.’” The revisor has express authority under § 3C.10, subd. 1(l), to “change reference numbers to agree with renumbered chapters, sections, or subdivisions,” and has not exercised it here. Whether a court reads “chapter 363” in subdivision 6(b) as reaching chapter 363A is [UNVERIFIED] on this page; no decision was retrieved, and the observation above is a report of what the revisor’s published text says, not a prediction.

The file the reference is drawn from, and the file you cannot get

A clause (5) disclosure has to be “documented in the personnel record,” which sends you to a different set of sections. Minn. Stat. § 181.961, subd. 2(a), requires an employer to comply with a written request to review the record “no later than seven working days after receipt of the request if the personnel record is located in this state, or no later than 14 working days after receipt of the request if the personnel record is located outside this state,” and for a separated employee, subdivision 2(c) requires the employer to “provide a copy of the personnel record to the employee.” Subdivision 2(d): “The employer may not charge a fee for the copy.” Under § 181.960, subd. 2, the term “employee” “includes any person who has been separated from employment for less than one year,” and § 181.961, subd. 1, allows a separated employee to review the record “once each year after separation for as long as the personnel record is maintained.” The mechanics are worked through in the personnel-file guide.

What the file will not contain is the reference itself. Section 181.960, subd. 4, defines “personnel record” and then excludes ten categories, of which clause (1) is:

(1) written references respecting the employee, including letters of reference supplied to an employer by another person;

That is the statute closing the obvious door. The information a clause (5) disclosure is drawn from is in the file and you can get it; the reference letter someone else wrote about you is not part of the record the statute gives you a right to see. The two disclosures § 181.967 itself mails to you — the clause (5) writing and the subdivision 3(b) copy — are the exceptions, and they exist because the section put them there.

The rebuttal that travels with the file

Section 181.962 is the piece most people do not know exists. Subdivision 1(a) gives two steps: the employer and the employee “may agree to remove or revise the disputed information,” and “if an agreement is not reached, the employee may submit a written statement specifically identifying the disputed information and explaining the employee’s position.” Subdivision 1(b) sets the terms:

The employee’s position statement may not exceed five written pages. The position statement must be included along with the disputed information for as long as that information is maintained in the employee’s personnel record. A copy of the position statement must also be provided to any other person who receives a copy of the disputed information from the employer after the position statement is submitted.

The last sentence is the one that reaches a reference. A position statement filed today attaches to the disputed information going forward, and any later recipient of a copy of that information gets the statement with it.

Subdivision 2 then converts the process into a defamation consequence. Paragraph (a) bars a defamation action by the employee based on information obtained through a file review “unless the employee requests that the employer comply with subdivision 1 and the employer fails to do so.” Paragraph (b) bars a common-law defamation action against the employer for communicating information in the record after the employee has exercised the right to review, unless four things are all true:

(1) the employee has disputed specific information contained in the personnel record pursuant to subdivision 1;

(2) the employer has refused to agree to remove or revise the disputed information;

(3) the employee has submitted a written position statement as provided under subdivision 1; and

(4) the employer either (i) has refused or negligently failed to include the employee’s position statement along with the disputed information or thereafter provide a copy of the statement to other persons as required under subdivision 1, or (ii) thereafter communicated the disputed information with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its falsity.

Paragraph (c) adds a separate route: the bar does not apply where the employer and employee did reach an agreement to remove or revise and the communication “is not consistent with the agreement.”

Two enforcement sections sit behind all of this. Section 181.964 provides that an employer “shall not discharge, discipline, penalize, interfere with, threaten, restrain, coerce, or otherwise retaliate or discriminate against an employee for asserting rights or remedies provided in sections 181.960 to 181.965.” Section 181.965, subd. 1, supplies “actual damages only, plus costs” for a violation of §§ 181.960 to 181.963, and “actual damages, back pay, and reinstatement or other make-whole, equitable relief, plus reasonable attorney fees” for a violation of the retaliation section. Subdivision 2 sets a short clock: an action under that section “must be commenced within one year of the actual or constructive discovery of the alleged violation.”

The one statement that is absolutely off-limits as a defamation claim

There is a Minnesota statute that flatly bars a defamation action over an employer’s written statement of why someone was fired, and it is not § 181.967. Section 181.933, subd. 1, lets an involuntarily terminated employee request the reason in writing within 15 working days, and requires the employer to answer in writing within ten working days “of the truthful reason for the termination.” Subdivision 2 then provides:

No communication of the statement furnished by the employer to the employee under subdivision 1 may be made the subject of any action for libel, slander, or defamation by the employee against the employer.

That bar is absolute on its face and it is narrow: it covers the statement furnished under subdivision 1, not the oral statement in a meeting, not an internal email, and not a later reference call. The termination-reason-letter guide works through the request and the ten-working-day answer.

Currency, and what this page does not do

Every section on this page was retrieved from the revisor on September 8, 2026, and its History line read: § 181.967, “2004 c 137 s 3”; § 181.960, “1989 c 349 s 1; 1994 c 595 s 1; 2007 c 147 art 10 s 15; 2024 c 127 art 9 s 4”; § 181.961, “1989 c 349 s 2; 1992 c 445 s 1; 1994 c 595 s 2; 1997 c 180 s 3; 2004 c 137 s 2”; § 181.962, “1989 c 349 s 3; 1992 c 445 s 2”; § 181.964, “1989 c 349 s 5; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 37”; § 181.965, “1989 c 349 s 6”; § 181.933, “1987 c 76 s 3; 2001 c 95 s 1”; and § 3C.10, read for subdivision 1(l). The revisor’s table of Minnesota Statutes affected by the 2026 Regular Session was queried one exact section at a time for §§ 181.967, 181.960, 181.961, 181.962, 181.964, 181.965, 181.933, 3C.10, and 363A.01. Sections 181.962, 181.965, and 363A.01 returned “No Records Found”; the others returned only their own enactment or pre-2026 amendments. No 2026 session law touches any section on this page.

No case law was retrieved for this page. CourtListener’s daily quota was exhausted on September 8, 2026, and no Minnesota decision construing § 181.967 was read; every statement above is drawn from the statutory text itself. The common-law qualified privilege that subdivision 6(a) preserves is decided by case law, and it is treated in the compelled self-publication guide rather than here.

This page describes what the sections say. Whether a particular thing a former employer said falls inside subdivision 3, whether it was documented in the personnel record, and whether it was true are questions about your file and your facts, and answering them is not what this page does.