A Protected Report Does Not Have to Name the Statute — but the Statute Has to Exist

Two words carry almost every argument under the Act

The Minnesota Whistleblower Act, Minn. Stat. §§ 181.931 to 181.935, protects six categories of conduct, and the guide on what the Act protects walks all six. This page goes one level down into the first one — the report itself — and into the two defined terms that decide most disputes about it.

Both definitions arrived in the same act, twenty-six years after the Act itself. Laws 2013, ch. 83, signed by the governor on May 24, 2013, added three subdivisions to § 181.931 that had never been there before. Section 1 added subd. 4, “Good faith.” Section 2 added subd. 5, “Penalize.” Section 3 added subd. 6, “Report.” Nothing was struck out to make room for them; the act’s own words are that § 181.931 “is amended by adding a subdivision to read.” Before 2013 the Act used “good faith” and “reports” without defining either, and the courts filled the gap.

Section 4 of the same act rewrote clause (1) of § 181.932, subd. 1, and the change is small on the page and large in effect: it inserted “, or planned violation” and inserted “or common law” into the list of things a report can be about.

Section 181.931, subd. 6:

“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 search of Minnesota appellate decisions available through CourtListener turns up none that quotes or construes that sentence. Thirteen years after the Legislature wrote it, the terms of the definition of “report” have not been interpreted by a Minnesota appellate court, so far as that search reaches. What follows is therefore mostly older law about the word “reports” as it appears in clause (1), which the 2013 definition sits alongside rather than replaces.

You do not have to name the law

Employers argue that a complaint is unprotected because the employee never identified the statute. The Minnesota Supreme Court answered that in Abraham v. County of Hennepin, 639 N.W.2d 342 (Minn. 2002), where county employees had complained to supervisors and to a state safety division without pleading any particular provision. At 354–55:

A whistleblower claim need not identify the specific law or rule that the employee suspects has been violated, so long as there is a federal or state law or rule adopted pursuant to law that is implicated by the employee’s complaint, the employee reported the violation or suspected violation in good faith, and the employee alleges facts that, if proven, would constitute a violation of law or rule adopted pursuant to law.

Read the conditions attached to the “so long as.” The employee is excused from naming the law. The employee is not excused from there being one, and is not excused from alleging facts that would amount to a violation of it. Abraham construed the clause then numbered subd. 1(a) and now numbered subd. 1(1). Abraham, 639 N.W.2d at 355.

But the law has to exist

Hedglin v. City of Willmar, 582 N.W.2d 897 (Minn. 1998), is the case that shows both halves at once, because the same firefighters made reports that fell on opposite sides of the line.

Reports that firefighters drove fire trucks to calls while drunk were protected: those reports implicated a state statute prohibiting driving under the influence, and the court said so at 902. Reports that officers “were showing up at fire calls while drunk” were not. At 902:

We conclude, however, that the vague reports made by Lundquist and Grove that some of the fire officers were showing up at fire calls while drunk are not protected by the whistleblower statute. While we find such conduct reprehensible, if in fact it did occur, we can find no statute or rule that is violated by such conduct, nor could Lundquist and Grove’s counsel point to any such statute or rule.

Two years later the court put the rule in a sentence. Obst v. Microtron, Inc., 614 N.W.2d 196, 204 (Minn. 2000): “Thus, it is clear that the report of a suspected violation of federal or state law must implicate an actual federal or state law and not one that does not exist.”

Obst is also where the court set out the other half of the same idea, at 200: “While there need not be an actual violation of law, the reported conduct must at least implicate a violation of law.”

One caution about carrying Hedglin and Obst forward without adjustment. Both were decided when clause (1) reached a violation of “any federal or state law or rule adopted pursuant to law” and nothing else. The 2013 act added “common law” to that list, which enlarged the class of things a report can be about — a point the court of appeals turned on in Moore v. City of New Brighton, 932 N.W.2d 317 (Minn. Ct. App. 2019), discussed in the hub guide. Whether any particular report that failed under the pre-2013 text would fare differently under the amended text is a question a search of Minnesota appellate decisions does not answer, and this page does not answer it either.

You do not have to be right

The most common thing employees get wrong about the Act, in both directions, is what happens if the underlying suspicion turns out to be unfounded. Hedglin, 582 N.W.2d at 902:

There may be fact questions as to whether any of these statutes were actually violated, but for purposes of the whistleblower statute, it is irrelevant whether there were any actual violations; the only requirement is that the reports of state law violations were made in good faith.

That last clause is doing real work, and in 1998 it meant something different from what it means today, because “good faith” was then undefined.

What “good faith” costs you, after 2013

Section 181.931, subd. 4, is one sentence and defines the phrase entirely by cross-reference:

“Good faith” means conduct that does not violate section 181.932, subdivision 3.

Section 181.932, subd. 3, in one sentence:

This section does not permit an employee to make statements or disclosures knowing that they are false or that they are in reckless disregard of the truth.

Two states of mind, and only two: knowledge of falsity, and reckless disregard of the truth. Negligence is not on the list. Neither is a mixed motive, an ulterior motive, or a self-interested one. And because § 181.931, subd. 1, provides that the terms defined in that section “have the meanings given them” for the purpose of §§ 181.931 to 181.935, the same definition governs “good faith” wherever it appears in the Act — in clause (1), in clause (4), and in the belief requirements of clauses (5) and (6).

That definition displaced a judicial test that had been in place since 2000. In Obst, 614 N.W.2d at 202, the court had held:

In order to determine whether a report of a violation or suspected violation of law is made in good faith, we must look not only at the content of the report, but also at the reporter’s purpose in making the report. The central question is whether the reports were made for the purpose of blowing the whistle, i.e., to expose an illegality.

In Friedlander v. Edwards Lifesciences, LLC, 900 N.W.2d 162 (Minn. 2017), the Minnesota Supreme Court answered a question sent to it by the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota and held that the 2013 definition eliminated that requirement. At 166:

Our prior interpretation of “good faith” in Obst gives the phrase a meaning different from the definition provided in the 2013 amendment. … The statutory definition, however, directs us to conduct a different inquiry, looking only to the content of the report.

The sentence the ellipsis stands in for identifies what the difference is: the Obst test looked at the reporter’s purpose as well as at the content of the report, and the statutory definition looks only at the content.

The facts are worth keeping, because employers still argue against them. Friedlander raised his concerns internally, and the parties agreed “that those who were told about Friedlander’s concern already knew about the conduct in question.” Friedlander, 900 N.W.2d at 164. Edwards Lifesciences’ position was that a report to people who already know is not whistleblowing, and it rested that position on Obst. Id. at 164. The court’s answer removed the ground it stood on: the inquiry now looks only to the content of the report. Id. at 166.

What survived Obst, and what did not

Friedlander is narrower than employees sometimes read it. It answered one question about one element. The other holdings in Obst were not before the court and were not disturbed:

• A report must implicate a law that exists. Obst, 614 N.W.2d at 204.
• The reported conduct need not actually be a violation. Id. at 200.
• Whether a report is protected does not turn on the employee’s own grasp of the statute. At 203, the court wrote that its conclusion “does not turn on Obst’s knowledge or understanding of 49 U.S.C. § 30118 when making his reports to Microtron. It turns on the content of his reports and his purpose in making the reports at the time they were made.” The second half of that sentence is the purpose element Friedlander eliminated; the first half is not.

Obst also described the Act, at 200, as protecting the conduct of “a neutral party” who blows the whistle for the protection of the general public or of some third person. That description was tied to the purpose inquiry the Legislature has since defined away, and a search of Minnesota appellate decisions returns none deciding what remains of it after 2013. This page does not state that the “neutral party” language is gone, and does not state that it survives.

There is no public-concern requirement to satisfy

Employers have twice asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to read a public-policy requirement into the Act, and twice been refused. Anderson-Johanningmeier v. Mid-Minnesota Women’s Center, Inc., 637 N.W.2d 270 (Minn. 2002), was a report that one employee had not been paid vacation time she was owed — as internal a matter as an employment dispute gets. The trial court and the court of appeals both held the report unprotected because it did not implicate public policy. At 277 the supreme court reversed:

In sum, we reject the importation of a public policy requirement into the whistleblower statute and hold that the protections of section 181.932, subd. 1(a), are not limited to reports that implicate public policy.

The court’s reason was textual: “Because section 181.932, subd. 1(a), clearly and unambiguously protects reports made of a violation of any federal or state law or rule adopted pursuant to law, we will not look beyond its text to search for an unexpressed public policy requirement.” Anderson-Johanningmeier, 637 N.W.2d at 276.

The court did identify what it thought would keep the Act from swallowing every discharge, and the answer it gave has since changed underneath it. At 277 it wrote that subd. 1(a) “contains a good faith requirement, however, which serves to limit the nature of actionable claims,” citing Obst at 202 — the purpose test. The Legislature replaced that test eleven years later. What limits the Act now is the content requirement: a communication about an actual, suspected, or planned violation of a statute, regulation, or the common law.

The line the definition actually draws

Putting the retrieved authority together, a communication is inside § 181.931, subd. 6, when it is about an actual, suspected, or planned violation of a statute, regulation, or the common law, by the employer or by someone else. The employee need not name the provision, need not be right that it was violated, and need not be reporting something the audience did not already know. What the employee cannot do is report something no law reaches, or make the report knowing it to be false or in reckless disregard of the truth.

Everything past that point — whether the employer’s response was one the statute forbids, whether the decision-maker knew of the report, whether the employer’s stated reason holds up — is a different set of questions, and this page does not reach them. The response side is treated in what counts as penalizing an employee, and reports made by people whose job is to make them in reporting as part of your job.

Currency

The sections quoted here are from the 2025 Minnesota Statutes as posted by the Revisor. The History line for § 181.931 ends at 2025 c 39 art 2 s 54-56, and for § 181.932 at 2025 c 39 art 2 s 57; the Revisor’s Table 2, queried for each section, records no 2026 action on either. The 2025 amendments added definitions of “fraud,” “misuse,” and “personal gain” and broadened clause (6) for state employees; they did not touch the definitions of “report” or “good faith.”

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