The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Court of Appeals that defined a person’s private vehicle as a public space in regards to carrying firearms in public.
The decision stems from the original case of Kyaw Be Bee, who was stopped by police in St. Paul back in 2022. During the traffic stop, a BB gun was found under the front seat, and the defendant was charged with a gross misdemeanor because he didn’t have a permit to carry a firearm in public. Kyaw Be Bee’s legal team smartly challenged on the grounds that Bee’s vehicle was private property, and the district court judge agreed, in turn dismissing the case.
However, the case was appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, who ruled that a private vehicle is actually a public space because it is regularly used on public roads. Therefore if you are using your vehicle on a public road, any firearms in the vehicle are considered to be “in public,” even if they remain in your personal vehicle. Surprisingly, that decision was upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court last week. And while the state Supreme Court stated that the ruling only applies to a firearms being stored in a vehicle, legal experts fear that a slippery slope has been created, and future cases may try to base their warrantless search of a vehicle on this case that, in part, establishes that private property is actually a public safe when it is on public property.
How Did We Get Here?
The decision is a head-scratcher to say the least, but it centered on Minnesota Statute 624.7181 subdivision 1(C), which describes a public place as follows:
“‘Public place’ means property owned, leased, or controlled by a governmental unit and private property that is regularly and frequently open to or made available for use by the public in sufficient numbers to give clear notice of the property’s current dedication to public use but does not include: a person’s dwelling house or premises, the place of business owned or managed by the person, or land possessed by the person; a gun show, gun shop, or hunting or target shooting facility; or the woods, fields, or waters of this state where the person is present lawfully for the purpose of hunting or target shooting or other lawful activity involving firearms.”
In the Minnesota Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Anne McKeig, the court said that specific locations that are not public places for the purposes of the law, such as “a person’s house, place of business and land” are all “immovable structures and land.” She added that a public place “generally refers to the geographic rather than the spatial location,” meaning that when a gun is in a private car on a public roadway, the roadway is the public place where it is illegal to carry the weapon without a permit.
The Minnesota Supreme Court attempted to make this ruling narrowly focused, but any good prosecutor is going to at least test the possibility of applying this statute in other ways, and that’s a problem for our Fourth Amendment protections. If we continue to shift to the idea that a private vehicle is a pubic space simply because it’s parked on the street, it’s going to open up a major can of worms for our ability to stay protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.
If you need help defending yourself against charges or an illegal search, turn to the team at Appelman Law Firm today at (952) 224-2277.
