Minnesota's Whistleblower Act Names Three Places a Report Can Go — Your Employer, Any Governmental Body, or a Law Enforcement Official — and a Second Clause That Only Works When the Government Asks You First

The recipient list is three items, and it has not moved since 1987

Minn. Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(1), protects an employee who

in good faith, reports a violation, suspected violation, or planned violation of any federal or state law or common law or rule adopted pursuant to law to an employer or to any governmental body or law enforcement official;

Three recipients, joined by “or”: an employer, any governmental body, a law enforcement official. The employee picks. The statute states no preference and no sequence.

Those recipient words are the oldest language in the Act. Laws 1987, ch. 76, § 2, enacted clause (a) — later renumbered clause (1) — with the same closing phrase: a report “to an employer or to any governmental body or law enforcement official.” Every later amendment of subdivision 1 was read in strike-and-insert form for this page, and none of them touched the recipients. Laws 1988, ch. 659, § 2, rewrote the refusal clause and left clauses (a) and (b) without a single mark on them. Laws 1997, ch. 237, § 16, added the health care clause. Laws 2013, ch. 83, § 4, changed what a report can be about — inserting “, or planned violation” and “or common law” — and left the recipients alone. Laws 2023, ch. 53, art. 11, § 26, rewrote the verbs before the colon. Laws 2025, ch. 39, art. 2, § 57, rewrote clause (6). The list of places a report may go is thirty-nine years old and has never been amended.

Neither “governmental body” nor “public body or office” is defined

Section 181.931 defines eight terms: employee, employer, fraud, good faith, misuse, penalize, personal gain, and report. Read the section end to end and that is the list. “Governmental body” is not on it. “Law enforcement official” is not on it. “Public body or office,” which clause (2) uses, is not on it either.

The one cross-reference the Act makes to a data statute does not fill the gap. Subdivision 2 of § 181.932 borrows “private data on individuals” from Minn. Stat. § 13.02, and chapter 13’s own term of art is a different phrase — “government entity”, which § 13.02, subd. 7a, defines as “a state agency, statewide system, or political subdivision,” each of which chapter 13 then defines separately. The Whistleblower Act does not use that phrase, and this page does not import it.

What the phrase “any governmental body” plainly does is refuse to rank recipients. There is no matching requirement in the text — nothing conditions protection on the report reaching the body with jurisdiction over the subject. A reader who has been told otherwise has been told something the sentence does not contain.

A report does not have to be written down

Section 181.931, subd. 6, settles the form question in its first four words:

“Report” means a verbal, written, or electronic communication by an employee about an actual, suspected, or planned violation of a statute, regulation, or common law, whether committed by an employer or a third party.

A spoken report to a supervisor, a voicemail to a state office, an email, a text message — all of them are inside the definition on its face. The definition and what it requires a communication to be about are worked through in what counts as a report; this page does not repeat that. What is worth pairing with the recipient list is the practical consequence: the statute imposes no writing requirement, and the difficulty with an unwritten report is proving later what was said, to whom, and when. That is an evidence problem, not a coverage problem.

Clause (2) runs the other direction

Minn. Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(2), protects an employee because:

the employee is requested by a public body or office to participate in an investigation, hearing, inquiry;

Everything about this clause is the mirror image of clause (1). Clause (1) protects something the employee initiates. Clause (2) protects something the government initiates. The Minnesota Court of Appeals drew exactly that line in Bersch v. Rgnonti & Associates, Inc., 584 N.W.2d 783 (Minn. Ct. App. 1998), at 787:

Furthermore, Bersch asserted her whistleblower claim under Minn.Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(b), which pertains to activities initiated by a public body or office. In contrast, Minn.Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(a), (c), pertain to activities (either words or actions) initiated by an employee.

Bersch is a legislative-auditor case. Rebecca Bersch cooperated with investigators from the legislative auditor’s office looking into her employer, declined to use her employer’s lawyer and hired her own to represent her in giving a formal statement, was reassigned to a lower-paying position, and was fired. The district court held that she had not been “requested” to participate because she cooperated voluntarily. The court of appeals reversed on the meaning of one word, at 787:

Request means “[t]o ask (a person) to do something.”

And then, at 787: “Under the plain meaning of the word ‘request,’ Bersch’s participation in the investigation was requested.” Voluntary cooperation with a government request is still participation at the government’s request. The employer had also argued that because her boss encouraged her to participate, it was not the auditor who requested it. The court answered, at 787: “The fact that Frederick Rgnonti encouraged Bersch’s participation in the investigation and communicated requests for information to her does not override or negate the legislative auditor’s requests for information.”

Note what clause (2) does not require. It contains no state-of-mind qualifier — the words “good faith” appear four times in § 181.932 and none of them is in clause (2). It does not require that the investigation concern a violation of law. And it does not require that what the employee said was useful. Bersch, 584 N.W.2d at 788:

Evidence that an employee participated in an investigation at the request of a public body or office is sufficient to prove that the employee engaged in conduct protected under Minn.Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(b).

The court’s reason for refusing to add a usefulness requirement is worth reading, because it is the kind of consequence courts do not usually spell out. Construing the clause to require that the information benefit the public, it said at 787, “could result in employees who participate in the same investigation at the request of a public body or office being treated differently under the statute. Employees who provided information useful to the investigation and then suffered adverse employment action would have a whistleblower claim, while employees who possessed no useful information or were not asked questions that elicited useful information would have no recourse under the whistleblower statute.”

The clause does not reach your employer’s own investigation

This is where clause (2) is most often misread, and the court of appeals closed it in Coursolle v. EMC Insurance Group, Inc., 794 N.W.2d 652 (Minn. Ct. App. 2011). John Coursolle answered questions in his employer’s internal investigation of a coworker’s complaint about a third employee, and was later terminated. At 658:

Coursolle’s argument also fails under paragraph (2) of section 181.932, subdivision 1. That paragraph confers protection on employees who participate in some investigations but not investigations conducted by an employer. The plain language of the statute protects an employee who is “requested by a public body or office to participate in an investigation, hearing, inquiry.” Minn.Stat. § 181.932, subd. 1(2) (emphasis added). Coursolle has not introduced any evidence that he was asked to participate in any investigation other than the investigation conducted by Scaglione. By its plain language, paragraph (2) does not protect an employee who is requested by his or her employer to participate in the employer’s internal investigation.

Clause (1) did not save him either, and for a reason about who made the report: “the evidentiary record makes clear that the employee who prompted EMC’s investigation made a report on her own behalf and that Coursolle merely provided information that may have corroborated her complaint.” Coursolle, 794 N.W.2d at 658. The court held, at 658, that “mere participation in an employer’s internal investigation of another employee’s complaint is not protected by paragraph (1) of section 181.932, subdivision 1.”

Coursolle also rejected an argument from federal law that employees still make. The employee asked the court to follow Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County, 555 U.S. 271 (2009), where the United States Supreme Court framed the question as “whether this protection extends to an employee who speaks out about discrimination not on her own initiative, but in answering questions during an employer’s internal investigation,” and answered: “We hold that it does.” Crawford, 555 U.S. at 273. The court of appeals said the texts are not comparable. It quoted Title VII’s participation clause — which reaches an employee who has “testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this subchapter,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a) — and concluded that “[t]hat language is significantly different from the relevant language of the whistleblower act, so much so that Crawford simply does not shed any light on the proper interpretation of section 181.932, subdivision 1.” Coursolle, 794 N.W.2d at 658.

One detail about Crawford makes the distinction sharper rather than weaker. Crawford was decided under Title VII’s opposition clause, not its participation clause: “Because Crawford’s conduct is covered by the opposition clause, we do not reach her argument that the Sixth Circuit misread the participation clause as well.” Crawford, 555 U.S. at 280. Minnesota’s clause (2) has no counterpart to either one. It protects participation the government requested, and nothing else.

Every published decision that quotes the clause, and how few there are

Clause (2) is thirty-nine years old and has almost no case law. Here is the search that establishes it.

Every published Minnesota Supreme Court and Minnesota Court of Appeals decision in the North Western Reporter, Second Series, volumes 400 through 932 — 14,139 decisions, filed between May 12, 1987 and September 4, 2019 — was retrieved from the Caselaw Access Project and searched for the phrase “public body or office.” Volume 932 is the end of the Caselaw Access Project’s North Western Reporter run; volume 400 predates the Act, and the search was limited to decisions filed on or after May 11, 1987, the day Laws 1987, ch. 76, was approved. Five records came back, covering four cases:

Two of those five are the same appeal, and the 1996 decision no longer exists as a decision. Its reporter header carries “Review Granted July 10, 1996” with no disposition printed there; the 1997 opinion supplies it. The supreme court granted the individual respondent’s petition for further review, stayed the case pending Janklow v. Minnesota Board of Examiners for Nursing Home Administrators, 552 N.W.2d 711 (Minn. 1996), and then remanded “for consideration in light of” Janklow. On remand the court of appeals wrote: “We now withdraw our original May 14, 1996, decision and substitute this new decision.” Carter, 558 N.W.2d at 269. It is listed here because the string search found it and a count that dropped it would not be checkable; nothing on this page relies on it.

Regner is also one of the decisions named in the Revisor’s published preemption notes on § 181.932. This page cites it only for the fact that it reproduces the subdivision, takes no position on what it holds, and does not rely on it for anything else.

Carter is worth one more sentence, because its facts contain a question no Minnesota decision has answered. The employee was the executive director of the Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training, and the opinion describes him as having participated in investigations “at the Board’s direction” — the Board being both a public body and his employer. The court cited clauses (a) and (b) in the same parenthetical and separated neither. Carter, 558 N.W.2d at 272. Whether a public employer’s own investigation can be a request by “a public body or office” within clause (2), when Coursolle holds a private employer’s cannot, is a question the retrieved decisions leave open.

No Minnesota Supreme Court decision appears in that list. Clause (2) has never been construed by Minnesota’s highest court in a published decision the search reaches.

Your name is private data — in two clauses, and only if the report left the building

Minnesota classifies the reporter’s identity, and the classification is narrower than the reputation it has. Section 181.932, subd. 2:

The identity of any employee making a report to a governmental body or law enforcement official under subdivision 1, clause (1) or (4), is private data on individuals as defined in section 13.02. The identity of an employee providing information under subdivision 1, clause (2), is private data on individuals if:

(1) the employee would not have provided the information without an assurance that the employee’s identity would remain private, because of a concern that the employer would commit an action prohibited under subdivision 1 or that the employee would be subject to some other form of retaliation; or

(2) the state agency, statewide system, or political subdivision reasonably believes that the employee would not have provided the data because of that concern.

If the disclosure is necessary for prosecution, the identity of the employee may be disclosed but the employee shall be informed prior to the disclosure.

Four limits are inside that. The classification attaches to a report made to a governmental body or law enforcement official — a report made to the employer, which clause (1) fully protects, is outside the sentence. It covers clauses (1) and (4) by name and no others. Clause (2) participation is covered only on one of the two stated conditions. And a report the state needs for a prosecution can be attributed to the employee, with notice first.

Minn. Stat. § 13.02, subd. 12, supplies the meaning of the classification: “‘Private data on individuals’ are data made by statute or federal law applicable to the data: (a) not public; and (b) accessible to the individual subject of those data.” Not public, and available to you.

Subdivision 2 has not always read this way, and the 1999 rewrite narrowed it. Laws 1999, ch. 227, § 14, amended the subdivision, and the act’s strike-and-insert markup shows exactly what came out. Three strings were struck: the opening of the old prohibition, “No public official or law enforcement official shall disclose, or cause to disclose,”; the words “or providing information”; and the old condition, “without the employee’s consent unless the investigator determines that disclosure is necessary for prosecution.” What the same act inserted is the structure quoted above — “to a governmental body or law enforcement official,” a clause list (written in 1999 as “clause (a) or (d)” and “clause (b),” renumbered since to clauses (1), (4), and (2)), and the classification as private data under § 13.02.

The shape of the change is the point. What the section had been was a prohibition on public officials, keyed to no particular clause of subdivision 1 and defeasible only by the employee’s consent or an investigator’s determination. What it is now is a data classification, keyed to clause (1), clause (4), and conditionally clause (2), and attaching only where the report went to a governmental body or law enforcement official.

What the Act does not authorize you to hand over

Reporting to a governmental body does not unlock data another law protects. The last sentence of § 181.932, subd. 1, is one line: “The disclosures protected pursuant to this section do not authorize the disclosure of data otherwise protected by law.” Subdivision 5 says the same from the confidentiality side. Those two limits are set out in the hub guide and are not repeated here — but they matter most in exactly the situation this page is about, because a public employee reporting to another government office is usually handling data that chapter 13 classifies in the first place. Public employees and whistleblowing carries that.

Whether the employer has to know

The Act does not require you to tell your employer that you reported. It conditions liability on the employer having acted “because” of the report, and that is a causation question rather than a notice requirement. What follows from it is unforgiving and is the same in every retaliation statute: a decision-maker who did not know about the report did not act because of it. That element, and what close timing does and does not prove, are in causation, knowledge, and timing.

There is an unresolved seam between those two rules, and it is worth naming rather than smoothing. Subdivision 2 classifies the reporter’s identity as private data precisely so the employer does not learn who reported; subdivision 1 makes the employer liable only for acting because of the report. No decision retrieved for this page addresses what happens when the classification works as intended.

What this page does not do

It reads two clauses and reports what the retrieved decisions hold about them. It does not decide whether any particular office is a “public body,” whether a particular conversation was a request or an invitation, or whether anything you said was a report of a violation of law. Which clause a set of facts arises under is the first question in a whistleblower case and the one this site cannot answer for you.

Currency

Statutory text is quoted from the 2025 Minnesota Statutes as posted by the Revisor. The History line for § 181.932 reads 1987 c 76 s 2; 1988 c 659 s 2; 1997 c 237 s 16; 1999 c 227 s 14; 2007 c 135 art 3 s 16; 2013 c 83 s 4; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 26; 2025 c 39 art 2 s 57; for § 181.931, 1987 c 76 s 1; 2013 c 83 s 1-3; 2025 c 39 art 2 s 54-56; for § 13.02, the section was checked the same way. The Revisor’s Table 2 was queried per exact section at both /statutes/2025/table2 and /statutes/2026/table2, and every row was read on its Session column: the most recent action on § 181.932 is the 2025 regular session, and there is no 2026 row for either section of the Act. Every session law amending § 181.932, subd. 1, was retrieved and read in strike-and-insert form — 1988, 1997, 2007, 2013, 2023, and 2025 — and none of them altered the recipients in clause (1) or changed anything clause (2) requires. The only marks clause (2) has ever carried are the trailing “or” struck by Laws 1997, ch. 237, § 16, when the health care clause was added, and its renumbering from “(b)” to “(2).”

Related: what counts as a report, the Whistleblower Act protects the report, the map of Minnesota whistleblower claims, and was my firing illegal.