Two weeks ago, the Minnesota Supreme Court accepted three petitions from groups seeking to support Housing First Minnesota’s building permit lawsuits against the cities of Corcoran and Dayton. Housing First Minnesota’s brief was also submitted two weeks ago.
These friend-of-the-court briefs are now live and available for reading. Each brief addresses a different aspect of the issues now before the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Builders Association of Minnesota / NARI-MN
The joint brief from the Builders Association of Minnesota and NARI Minnesota offers the most direct critique of how local government policies can add to the cost of housing in Minnesota. Their brief cites research from several of Housing First Minnesota’s network of housing policy organizations, including Pew Charitable Trusts and the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center. It also features research from Housing Affordability Institute written by economist Dr. Elliot Eisenberg and Nick Erickson, Housing First Minnesota’s senior director of housing policy, who also leads the Institute’s programming.
“Minnesota’s supply shortfall compounds the problem. A November 2025 study found that Minnesota’s homeownership rate fell to 71% in 2024—a three-percentage-point decline that was the largest single-year drop in forty years of Census data—and estimated the State’s housing deficit at approximately 98,000 units, three-quarters of them in the Twin Cities region. The study further reported that residential permits declined 35% statewide and 43% in the Twin Cities from 2021 to 2024, and that Minnesota has the highest median cost of new and existing single-family homes in the upper Midwest. The Pew Charitable Trusts, drawing on that research, observed that more than half of Minnesota households can no longer afford the median-priced existing home and roughly three-quarters cannot afford the median-priced new home.”
BAM and NARI-MN Brief – Edited for formatting.
Institute for Justice
Turning to the legal issues at the heart of the case, housing reform coalition partner Institute for Justice argues that Housing First Minnesota’s use of the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act is sound and that the Court of Appeals decision should be reversed.
Institute for Justice warns that allowing the decision to stand could upend nearly a century of legal precedent governing when parties may seek a court ruling on the legality of government action, with implications extending well beyond Minnesota.
“If you were a legislator looking to pass a law to provide the people of your state—such as the members of Housing First Minnesota—a mechanism to challenge the validity of statutes and ordinances, it is hard to think of clearer language. The [Uniform Declaratory Judgment] Act states that courts have power to declare rights, including rights affected by the validity of a statute or ordinance, and that people have the ability to ask courts to rule on those laws’ validity.”
Institute for Justice Brief
Institute for Justice is also partnering with Housing First Minnesota through the Yes to Homes coalition and is representing a homeowner in a lawsuit against the City of Blaine over the city’s repeated denial of an accessory dwelling unit despite ADUs being a permitted use.
ACLU-MN
The ACLU of Minnesota focuses on another important legal question before the Court: the so-called political question doctrine. In its brief, the ACLU highlights that siding with the Cities’ view that DLI, not the courts, is the proper entity to address proportionality of the fees. Note: Housing First petitioned DLI to address the case in 2021, and the agency said this is outside of their powers.
“The Cities ask this Court to apply the political question doctrine not to a power constitutionally retained by the people or specifically delegated to a co-equal branch of government, but rather to an administrative agency’s purported authority to oversee compliance with a regulation promulgated by that same agency. In short, the Cities seek a drastic expansion of the doctrine that threatens to swallow all of administrative law. Amici have identified no case in any state or federal court stretching political questions this far. This Court should not be the first and only to do so.”
ACLU-MN Brief
Housing First Minnesota thanks all four of its amicus partners for contributing their expertise to this case and helping to defend homeownership through legal advocacy.
Follow Housing First Minnesota on social media for updates on this case and other advocacy issues. Members with questions should contact Nick Erickson, senior director of housing policy.
Related:
- Legislative Update: Legislators Hold Building Permit Profit Hearing, Renew Call for Audits and Refunds
- Housing First Minnesota Takes Legal Action on Permit Fee Overcollection
- Housing First Minnesota’s Permit Lawsuits Land in Court
