Updated at 2:24 p.m.
Four Republican senators plan to petition the Minnesota Supreme Court Monday afternoon, asserting that the courts should not decide what to fund in the event of a shutdown.
The petition will be filed on behalf of Sens. Warren Limmer, Scott Newman, Sean Nienow and Roger Chamberlain. It states that only constitutional and statutory mandates should be funded during a shutdown, rather than leaving it up to the courts.
The brief responds to an earlier petition from Attorney General Lori Swanson, asking the Ramsey County Court to order that "core functions" of state government continue in the event of a shutdown.
The senators note that some spending has already been accounted for in statute. They say, for example, that continued education funding is written into law.
They write that in 2001 and 2005, "it is evident the courts were used as pawns in a political chess game until public outrage brought the politicians to reason. Their inability to reach an accord allowed the court in 2005 to run government through the power of the purse. The republican form of government became the despotic government Thomas Jefferson feared."
The petition then quotes Jefferson from 1782 writing: "All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is the precise definition of a despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands and not a single one."
The brief adds that Gov. Mark Dayton's request that the court order mediation between the legislature and the executive branch is outside the bounds of the constitution.
