The Minnesota Whistleblower Act Says Nothing About Releases — and the Human Rights Act's 15-Day Rescission Right Reaches Only Chapter 363A

The Act is silent, and the silence is the finding

Read Minn. Stat. §§ 181.931 to 181.935 end to end and there is no waiver provision in any of them. No sentence declaring a release void. No rescission window. No requirement that anyone be told anything before signing. The five sections create definitions, a prohibition, a carve-out for knowingly false and reckless reports, a data classification for the reporter’s identity, two savings clauses, two notice provisions, and a remedy, and they stop.

That silence is easy to miss because the statute an employee is most likely to have read about does the opposite. Minn. Stat. § 363A.31, the Human Rights Act’s waiver section, has two subdivisions and both of them are keyed to one chapter. Subdivision 1:

Any provision, whether oral or written, of a lease, contract, or other agreement or instrument which purports to be a waiver by an individual of any right or remedy provided in this chapter is contrary to public policy and void if the waiver or release purports to waive claims arising out of acts or practices which occur after the execution of the waiver or release.

Subdivision 2 opens the same way:

A waiver or release of rights or remedies secured by this chapter which purports to apply to claims arising out of acts or practices prior to, or concurrent with, the execution of the waiver or release may be rescinded within 15 calendar days of its execution …

“This chapter” is chapter 363A. The Whistleblower Act is chapter 181. Nothing in either subdivision reaches a claim under § 181.932, and nothing in chapter 181 supplies a counterpart. The mechanics of the Human Rights Act rescission — the writing, the certified mail, the 15 calendar days — are on what a severance release buys, which is where a reader with an MHRA claim should be.

What a search of chapter 181 turns up

The full text of Minnesota Statutes chapter 181 as posted by the Revisor for 2025 was retrieved and searched, with zero-width characters stripped before counting. The word “waiv” in any form appears 13 times. None of those occurrences declares void an agreement waiving rights under §§ 181.931 to 181.935. What they are instead: the wage-disclosure prohibition in § 181.172(a)(2), which forbids an employer to “require an employee to sign a waiver or other document which purports to deny an employee the right to disclose the employee’s wages”; a variance-and-waiver rulemaking provision in the nursing home standards sections; several collective-bargaining waiver provisions in the earned sick and safe time law; and a definitional use in the drug and alcohol testing law.

The word “void” appears 17 times in the chapter as a whole word, and every one of them is attached to something other than the Whistleblower Act: two are section headnotes in the chapter’s table of sections; one is the assignment-of-wages provision in § 181.06; two are the employee-invention provisions in § 181.78; one is § 181.79’s rule that “[a]ny agreement entered into between an employer and an employee contrary to this section shall be void,” which is about deductions for faulty workmanship; and the remaining eleven are the covenant-not-to-compete and restrictive-covenant sections that the noncompete guide and the NDA guide carry.

Inside the Act itself, one subdivision does address agreements, and its subject matter is telling. Section 181.932, subd. 4: “This section does not diminish or impair the rights of a person under any collective bargaining agreement.” The Legislature wrote a savings clause for one kind of agreement in 1987 and has never written anything about individual agreements in the thirty-nine years since. Whether that silence means a private release is enforceable, or means the question is simply open, is not something the text answers and not something any decision retrieved for this page answers.

A search of 1,673 published Minnesota Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decisions in North Western Reporter, Second Series, volumes 825 through 932 — decided between May 29, 2013 and September 4, 2019 — returns three that cite § 181.932 and also contain “releas” or “waiv” in any form. In all three the words appear in an unrelated context: a reference to two United States Supreme Court decisions “released on the same day,” a quotation of the unemployment statute, and an appellate-waiver rule. None decides whether a Whistleblower Act claim can be released.

The claim a private agreement cannot touch

Unemployment is the clear case, and it is clear because the Legislature said so twice. Minn. Stat. § 268.192, subd. 1:

Any agreement by an individual to waive, release, or commute rights to unemployment benefits or any other rights under the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance Law is void.

The same subdivision makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to “require or accept any waiver of any right or in any manner obstruct or impede an application or continued request for unemployment benefits.” The Minnesota Supreme Court quoted that criminal provision in Dukowitz v. Hannon Security Services, 841 N.W.2d 147, 153 (Minn. 2014), as a reason not to create a common-law tort on top of it: “Under Minn.Stat. § 268.192, subd. 1 (2012), an employer who ‘directly or indirectly … obstruct[s] or impede[s] an application or continued request for unemployment benefits’ is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Subdivision 1a closes the version of the deal employers actually propose. An employer may not make an agreement that, in exchange for the employer’s promise not to contest benefits — “including agreeing not to provide information to the department” — the employee will quit, take a leave of absence, leave temporarily or permanently, or withdraw a grievance or appeal of a termination. “An agreement that violates this subdivision has no effect under this chapter.”

A severance clause promising that the employer will not contest benefits therefore buys nothing from the decision-maker: “Any agreement between an applicant and an employer is not binding on the commissioner in determining an applicant’s entitlement.” Minn. Stat. § 268.069, subd. 2. The hearing that decides eligibility is described in the unemployment hearing that decides the case.

The Act protects the report. It does not authorize the disclosure.

Employees read the Whistleblower Act as a permission slip and it is not one. Two provisions say so in terms.

The last sentence of subdivision 1: “The disclosures protected pursuant to this section do not authorize the disclosure of data otherwise protected by law.”

Subdivision 5: “This section does not permit disclosures that would violate federal or state law or diminish or impair the rights of any person to the continued protection of confidentiality of communications provided by common law.”

Read subdivision 5 closely, because it is the provision most directly aimed at a gag clause and it runs against the employee. The Act expressly declines to “diminish or impair” a person’s right to “the continued protection of confidentiality of communications provided by common law.” Contractual confidentiality is not common-law confidentiality, and the subdivision does not mention contracts — but the drafting posture is unmistakable. Nothing in §§ 181.931 to 181.935 announces that a protected report overrides an obligation of confidence from any other source.

What the Act does supply is a cause of action running the other direction. Section 181.935(a) opens: “In addition to any remedies otherwise provided by law, an employee injured by a violation of section 181.932 may bring a civil action ….” That is a non-exclusivity clause about remedies, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has treated that opening phrase as operative rather than decorative — the treatment is on what a whistleblower claim can recover. It says nothing about waiver.

So the collision between a signed NDA and a protected report is not one question but two. Whether the employer may retaliate because of the report is answered by § 181.932 and the cases on it. Whether the employer may sue on the contract is answered by contract law and by whatever federal provision happens to cover the subject matter of the disclosure — and there are three.

The three federal provisions that reach a confidentiality clause

Securities: 17 C.F.R. § 240.21F-17(a), the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule, is one sentence and it names the conduct directly:

No person may take any action to impede an individual from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation, including enforcing, or threatening to enforce, a confidentiality agreement (other than agreements dealing with information covered by § 240.21F-4(b)(4)(i) and § 240.21F-4(b)(4)(ii) of this chapter related to the legal representation of a client) with respect to such communications.

Paragraph (b) adds that where a director, officer, member, agent, or employee of a represented entity has initiated communication with the Commission about a possible securities law violation, “the staff is authorized to communicate directly with you regarding the possible securities law violation without seeking the consent of the entity’s counsel.”

Three limits are inside that rule. It is about communicating with the Commission staff — not with the press, not with a state agency, not with a coworker. It is about a possible securities law violation. And it is a Commission rule; nothing in its text creates a private right of action, and this page does not state that one exists.

Trade secrets: 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b) immunizes an individual against liability “under any Federal or State trade secret law” for a disclosure of a trade secret made in confidence to a federal, state, or local government official or to an attorney “solely for the purpose of reporting or investigating a suspected violation of law,” or made under seal in a court filing. It also requires an employer to give notice of that immunity “in any contract or agreement with an employee that governs the use of a trade secret or other confidential information,” and supplies the consequence for not doing so. The full provision, its notice requirement, its May 11, 2016 applicability date, and the two boundaries on the immunity are quoted in trade secrets and what you may take. The reason it belongs in a severance packet discussion is mechanical: § 1833(b)(3)(A) attaches the notice duty to the agreement, so an exit-meeting confidentiality agreement is exactly the document it is about.

Harassment: 42 U.S.C. § 19403(a), the Speak Out Act, provides that “[w]ith respect to a sexual assault dispute or sexual harassment dispute, no nondisclosure clause or nondisparagement clause agreed to before the dispute arises shall be judicially enforceable in instances in which conduct is alleged to have violated Federal, Tribal, or State law.” Four qualifiers sit in that sentence, the sharpest being “agreed to before the dispute arises” — which is the onboarding NDA, not the settlement you are being handed. Section 19404 limits the chapter to “a claim that is filed under Federal, State, or Tribal law on or after December 7, 2022,” and § 19403(d) preserves an employer’s ability to protect “trade secrets or proprietary information.” The clause-by-clause treatment is on NDAs and nonsolicits after the noncompete ban.

What a release cannot do to the report itself

One point is structural rather than statutory, and it is worth stating plainly because the two things are constantly confused.

A release is a promise not to sue on claims that already exist. A gag clause is a promise not to say something in the future. They fail differently. A release that covers an accrued whistleblower claim is a contract question; the Act supplies no rule about it. A gag clause that purports to prevent a future report does not, by its own force, change what § 181.932 forbids — the section prohibits an employer from taking the listed actions against an employee because the employee made a protected report, and it makes no exception for an employer that got the employee to promise not to. Whether the employer can then sue on the promise is the contract question above.

No Minnesota decision retrieved for this page tests that structure, which is why this page describes it rather than predicting how it comes out.

What this page does not do

It reads the statutes and reports what is in them and what is not. It does not tell you whether a particular release covers a particular claim, whether a particular clause is enforceable, or what signing would cost. Those are questions about your document, and reading it is the work this page cannot do.

Currency

Minnesota text is quoted from the 2025 Minnesota Statutes as posted by the Revisor. History lines: § 181.931, 1987 c 76 s 1; 2013 c 83 s 1-3; 2025 c 39 art 2 s 54-56; § 181.932, 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; § 181.935, 1987 c 76 s 5; 2007 c 135 art 3 s 17; § 363A.31, 1984 c 567 s 1; 1985 c 175 s 1; 1Sp2021 c 11 art 3 s 16; § 268.192, ending at 2012 c 201 art 2 s 7. The Revisor’s Table 2 was queried per exact section at both /statutes/2025/table2 and /statutes/2026/table2 and every row read on its Session column; none of these sections has a 2026 row.

The Revisor publishes § 363A.31 with a note that subdivision 1, formerly § 363.031, “was found preempted by federal law with regard to arbitration agreements in Johnson v. Piper Jaffray, Inc., 530 N.W.2d 790 (Minn. 1995).” That decision was not retrieved for this page and this page states nothing about it beyond the words of the note.

The federal sections were retrieved from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute on September 11, 2026: 18 U.S.C. § 1833 carries a 2016 amendment credit to Pub. L. 114–153 and nothing later; 42 U.S.C. §§ 19402, 19403, and 19404 each carry only the enacting credit to Pub. L. 117–224, December 7, 2022. The regulation was retrieved from the eCFR versioner API rather than from any mirror: title 17 at its most recent issue date, September 8, 2026 (current through September 9, 2026), and the section’s version record shows a latest amendment date of December 31, 2016, with the section not removed.

Related: what a severance release buys, NDAs and nonsolicits after the noncompete ban, the exit meeting, and the map of Minnesota whistleblower claims.