Television personalities, a state representative and Mrs. Minnesota United States 2007 were among the local luminaries who failed to prove that police officers improperly snooped into their driver's license records, a federal appeals court ruled this week.
The opinion is the latest blow to plaintiffs who have swamped cities and counties across the state with lawsuits in recent years, alleging that police and other public employees wrongly accessed their private data. About 50 plaintiffs are still pursuing cases, according to the League of Minnesota Cities, but successive court rulings have severely narrowed which queries of the state's Driver and Vehicle Services database should be considered improper.
In its opinion this week, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court's dismissal of nine lawsuits and allowed four others to move forward against a limited number of cities. It is the court's second opinion on the matter, following a 2015 decision on an earlier wave of lawsuits.
"In terms of the taxpayers being benefited by this decision, it's massive," said attorney Jon Iverson, whose firm represents more than 150 cities named in the lawsuits. He called the opinion a "complete victory" for cities in the majority of cases.
Attorneys representing plaintiffs said it was disheartening that many of their clients won't be able to pursue cases that might illuminate why officers were making hundreds of queries of the data.
"The Drivers Privacy Protection Act has very little meaning if the people who are in a position to hold people accountable aren't willing to do so. And clearly that was the case here," said attorney Sonia Miller-Van Oort — whose firm Sapientia Law Group represents many of the plaintiffs — referring to the federal law that protects driver information.
The lawsuits began several years ago after high-profile breaches of the state's DVS database, which contains photographs, addresses and driving records of Minnesotans with a license. The state's legislative auditor later found that many law enforcement personnel were misusing their access to the database, calling it "a real problem."
Many plaintiffs in the lawsuits decided this week were members of the media — or people who appeared in the media — who found that officers had accessed their files hundreds of times in some cases. They include KSTP's Jay Kolls, KMSP's Tim Sherno and Alix Kendall, Laureen Barghini of myTalk 107.1's "Lori & Julia" show, Cynthia Porter, formerly of the Winona Post, and Ashley Arcaro, formerly Ashley Trainer, who appeared on "Survivor: Samoa" in 2009.
