Eighth Circuit Holds Minnesota's Election Speech Injunction Law a Prior Restraint

Eighth Circuit Holds Minnesota's Election Speech Injunction Law a Prior Restraint

On August 20, 2026, the Eighth Circuit held that Minnesota's civil injunction tool for stopping "materially false" election speech, Minn. Stat. section 211B.075, subdivision 5(b), authorizes an unconstitutional prior restraint. The court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for the entry of a preliminary injunction in favor of the challengers in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Ellison, No. 24-3094.

Information last verified on August 27, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses a federal appellate ruling on a Minnesota election-speech statute's civil injunction mechanism, binding on federal courts in the Eighth Circuit. It does not address Minnesota's separate deepfake-specific statute, criminal-defamation law generally, or any other state's election-speech statute. For Minnesota's dedicated AI and deepfake election law, see our page on Minnesota's deepfake statute.

What Happened

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Stras joined by Judges Gruender and Kobes, reversed in part a district court's denial of a preliminary injunction sought by Minnesota Voters Alliance and two of its members against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Anoka County Attorney Brad Johnson. The Alliance had argued publicly that felons still serving supervised release cannot lawfully vote under the Minnesota Constitution, a position state officials dispute. Fearing prosecution or a civil suit under Minnesota's election-disinformation statute, the Alliance sued first, seeking a declaration that the law violates the First Amendment. Anoka County counterclaimed, seeking damages and an order restraining the Alliance's speech. The district court sided with the state, dismissing the complaint and denying the preliminary injunction; the Eighth Circuit disagreed on the constitutional questions and reversed in part.

The panel's opinion opens bluntly: "A group of Minnesotans want to express their belief that certain felons cannot vote. Can the state criminalize their speech? In denying a preliminary injunction, the district court thought so. We disagree." The court found the Alliance had standing (an actual injury from defending Anoka County's counterclaim, and an imminent injury from the threat of a court order restraining its speech or an award of damages), then reached the merits of the preliminary-injunction request.

The panel's central holding addresses Minn. Stat. section 211B.075, subdivision 5(b), the provision letting the attorney general, a county attorney, or "any person injured" bring a civil action "to prevent or restrain a violation" of the statute whenever "there is a reasonable basis to believe" a violation is about to happen. The court held this authorizes a prior restraint, "a judicial order forbidding certain communications . . . issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur," and that this particular prior restraint lacks the procedural safeguards the doctrine requires. As the opinion put it: "The point is that, to the extent the statute authorizes a prior restraint on speech, the First Amendment stands in the way. We express no opinion, however, about the constitutionality of any other available remedy."

What the Law Actually Says

Minn. Stat. section 211B.075 is titled "Intimidation and Interference with the Voting Process; Penalties," and it does more than the single "prior restraint" provision at issue in this case. Reading the current statute at revisor.mn.gov, its structure matters for understanding exactly what this ruling reaches and what it leaves alone:

• Subdivision 1 (Intimidation) bars using or threatening force, coercion, violence, or economic reprisal to compel or impede voting-related conduct. Not addressed by this opinion; remanded to the district court.
• Subdivision 2 (Deceptive practices) bars transmitting, within 60 days of an election, information a person intends to use to impede or prevent someone from voting and knows to be materially false, including false information about voting procedures, eligibility, or safety. The panel found the Alliance likely to succeed on its First Amendment challenge to this provision, holding it content-based (it turns on "the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed") and therefore subject to strict scrutiny, which the panel concluded the state had not met because the provision is both overinclusive and underinclusive. It is overinclusive, the panel said, because a less restrictive alternative exists: counter speech, including a state education campaign directed at the felons on supervised release whose names and contact information Minnesota already holds, and separately because "the universe of potential complainants is not restricted to state officials," so any injured person can sue. It is underinclusive because it bars discouraging eligible voters but not encouraging ineligible ones.
• Subdivision 3 (Interference) bars intentionally hindering or preventing voting or registration. Also not addressed; remanded.
• Subdivision 4 (Vicarious liability) extends liability to those who help or conspire with a violator.
• Subdivision 5 (Criminal penalties; civil remedies) has four parts: (a) makes a violation a gross misdemeanor; (b) the civil "prevent or restrain" action just held unconstitutional as a prior restraint; (c) a separate civil action, brought under Minn. Stat. section 8.31, for damages, investigation costs, attorney fees, and a civil penalty of up to $1,000; and (d) makes these remedies cumulative, subject to a two-year statute of limitations.

That structure matters because the ruling is narrower than a plain description of "Minnesota's false election speech law was struck down" would suggest. The panel's prior-restraint holding reaches only the pre-speech injunctive mechanism in subdivision 5(b), and it did not strike that provision from the books. This was an interlocutory appeal from a preliminary-injunction denial, and the court wrote that "to the extent the statute authorizes a prior restraint on speech, the First Amendment stands in the way." It added, "We express no opinion, however, about the constitutionality of any other available remedy," citing subdivision 5(a) through (d) and Minnesota's severability rule. That leaves the criminal gross-misdemeanor penalty in 5(a), the after-the-fact damages and civil-penalty action in 5(c), and the cumulative-remedies provision in 5(d) unaddressed. The panel separately, on likelihood-of-success grounds tied to this preliminary-injunction appeal, found the underlying "materially false" speech ban in subdivision 2 unlikely to survive strict scrutiny as applied here. Neither holding touches subdivisions 1, 3, or 4, which the district court must address on remand.

Why prior restraints get special treatment. Anglo-American law has long distinguished a court order forbidding speech before it happens from liability imposed after the fact. A subsequent-punishment scheme, such as a defamation suit or a criminal prosecution for speech already made, lets the speaker decide whether to risk the consequences and lets a court evaluate an actual, completed statement. A prior restraint instead lets a court, or in this case a private litigant armed with only "a reasonable basis to believe" a violation is coming, stop speech in advance, before any court has adjudicated whether the speech is actually unlawful. The Supreme Court has said prior restraints come "bearing a heavy presumption against [their] constitutional validity" and, per Freedman v. Maryland, that any prior restraint must be tightly time-limited and procedurally safeguarded. The Eighth Circuit found none of that here: the "reasonable basis to believe" standard is loose, nothing stops an official from obtaining an order and sitting on it until the election passes and the speech no longer matters, the 60-day pre-election window means "any preliminary determination supporting a prior restraint effectively becomes final," and a restraining order can run for an "indefinite duration," backed by contempt, even against speech that turns out not to have violated the statute at all.

The Separate Minnesota Deepfake Statute

Minnesota also has a distinct, deepfake-specific election law, Minn. Stat. section 609.771, enacted in 2023 and amended in 2024, which is not at issue in this case and which this panel did not address. It criminalizes disseminating a "deep fake" (defined as AI-generated or synthetic media "so realistic that a reasonable person would believe it depicts speech or conduct" the depicted person never engaged in) if the disseminator knows or reasonably should know the item is a deep fake, the dissemination is made without the depicted individual's consent and with intent to injure a candidate or influence an election, and it occurs within 90 days before an election or a political party nominating convention, or after the start of an absentee-voting period. It also has its own separate civil-relief provision in subdivision 4, letting the attorney general, a county or city attorney, the depicted individual, or an injured candidate seek an injunction against someone "reasonably believed to be about to violate" the statute.

That statute has been litigated separately, in Kohls v. Ellison. On February 9, 2026, a different Eighth Circuit panel (Chief Judge Colloton, Judges Loken and Benton) affirmed a denial of a preliminary injunction against section 609.771, but on standing and delay grounds rather than on the First Amendment merits: it held that a commentator whose videos were labeled "PARODY" lacked standing because his content did not meet the statute's own realism requirement, and that a legislator co-plaintiff had unreasonably delayed in seeking relief. The Eighth Circuit expressly declined to reach the constitutional questions in that case, and the litigation continues in the district court. Section 609.771 remains in force. Readers should not conflate the two Minnesota statutes: this article's holding concerns only section 211B.075's civil injunction mechanism, not the deepfake-specific criminal law.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The pattern the Eighth Circuit found constitutionally defective in section 211B.075, subdivision 5(b), is not unique to Minnesota's general election-disinformation law. A number of state election-deepfake statutes are built the same way: a content-based prohibition on speech a person "knows" or has "reckless disregard" is materially false or synthetic, paired with a civil-injunction remedy that lets a court, or in some states a private litigant, stop the speech before it is published based on a prediction that a violation is imminent, all compressed into a narrow pre-election window where any interim ruling functions as the final word. Minnesota's own deepfake statute, section 609.771, subdivision 4, uses closely comparable language, authorizing relief against a person "reasonably believed to be about to violate" the law. This opinion does not rule on that provision, and neither we nor the panel express any view on how a court would resolve a prior-restraint challenge to it. But the reasoning here, that a "reasonable basis to believe" standard combined with an indefinite-duration, pre-election injunction lacks the procedural safeguards a prior restraint requires, is the kind of analysis a court would need to work through for any similarly structured injunctive remedy.

The opinion is also notable for keeping the strict-scrutiny analysis and the prior-restraint analysis separate. A content-based ban on "materially false" election speech can, in principle, fail strict scrutiny on its own terms (over- or under-inclusiveness, as the panel found for subdivision 2) independent of whether its enforcement mechanism happens to include a pre-speech injunction. States drafting or defending similar laws now have two distinct doctrinal targets to account for: whether the underlying speech ban is narrowly tailored to a compelling interest, and, separately, whether any civil injunction remedy attached to it satisfies prior-restraint procedural safeguards. Neither analysis in this opinion resolves how any other state's statute, or Minnesota's own deepfake law, would fare; each depends on its own text and record.

What Happens Next

This is a preliminary-injunction ruling, not a final judgment on the merits. The panel explicitly noted that Anoka County's counterclaim against the Alliance remains pending in the district court, which is why the case is not yet final and why appellate review was limited to the denial of the preliminary injunction under 28 U.S.C. section 1292(a)(1). On remand, the district court must enter a preliminary injunction in favor of the Alliance and its members and must separately decide, "in the first instance," whether the intimidation and interference provisions in subdivisions 1 and 3 suffer the same First Amendment fate as subdivision 2. The underlying case, including any final ruling on the statute's constitutionality, has not concluded.

How This Affects You

For Minnesota voters, campaigns, and advocacy groups, the immediate practical effect is narrower than the headline suggests. The injunction the Eighth Circuit ordered runs to the named plaintiffs: the court remanded for entry of a preliminary injunction "in favor of the Alliance and its members," citing Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831, 851 (2025), the Supreme Court's decision limiting universal injunctions. What the opinion supplies to everyone else is binding Eighth Circuit reasoning, which a federal court in the circuit would have to follow if an official or a private litigant tried to use section 211B.075's subdivision 5(b) mechanism to obtain a pre-speech order based on a mere "reasonable basis to believe" a violation is coming. Criminal liability for knowingly false, vote-impeding election speech under subdivision 5(a), and after-the-fact civil damages or a civil penalty under subdivision 5(c), have not been addressed by this ruling and are not automatically unavailable. Anyone facing an actual or threatened enforcement action, or a counterclaim, under this statute should consult a lawyer licensed in Minnesota about how this decision applies to their specific circumstances.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers a federal appellate ruling applicable in the Eighth Circuit (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota) and reflects sources verified on August 27, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• our state-by-state deepfake laws hub
• Minnesota's dedicated deepfake and AI election law
• how Iowa regulates synthetic election media
• Missouri's approach to election deepfakes

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Last updated: 2026-08-27. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-08-27.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the Eighth Circuit strike down Minnesota's election disinformation law?

Not entirely. The court held that the civil injunction mechanism in Minn. Stat. section 211B.075, subdivision 5(b), which lets officials or an injured person sue to 'prevent or restrain' a suspected violation before it happens, is an unconstitutional prior restraint. It separately found the underlying 'materially false' speech ban in subdivision 2 unlikely to survive strict scrutiny, but did not address the criminal penalty in subdivision 5(a) or the damages and civil-penalty remedy in subdivision 5(c).

Is this a final ruling?

No. The Eighth Circuit reviewed only the denial of a preliminary injunction. The case returns to the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, where a related counterclaim is still pending, and the district court must still decide whether the statute's intimidation and interference provisions are constitutional.

What is a prior restraint, in plain terms?

A prior restraint is a court order or government action that stops speech before it happens, rather than punishing someone after they have spoken. Courts treat prior restraints far more skeptically than after-the-fact liability, and require them to be narrow, time-limited, and paired with strong procedural safeguards before a court can issue one.

Does this affect Minnesota's deepfake election law?

No. Minn. Stat. section 609.771, the state's deepfake-specific criminal statute, was not before this panel and is not addressed by this opinion. It remains in force and has separately survived a preliminary-injunction challenge on standing and delay grounds in Kohls v. Ellison, No. 25-1300 (8th Cir. Feb. 9, 2026).

Which states does this ruling bind?

The opinion is published, making it binding precedent in the Eighth Circuit, which covers federal courts in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Can someone still be prosecuted in Minnesota for knowingly spreading false, vote-impeding election information?

This ruling does not address the criminal gross-misdemeanor penalty in subdivision 5(a). Whether that provision remains enforceable, given the panel's separate strict-scrutiny concerns about subdivision 2, is a question the district court will need to address on remand.

Who brought this case?

Minnesota Voters Alliance, along with the individual plaintiffs named in the caption as Mary Amlaw, Ken Wendling, and Tim Kirk, filed a preemptive suit against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Anoka County Attorney Brad Johnson to head off enforcement. Anoka County then counterclaimed, seeking money damages and an order restraining the Alliance from violating the law.