Minnesota Court of Appeals throws out conviction, rules school bus stop signs must be fully extended

The most recent data in Minnesota shows that more than 700,000 children are transported on school buses each year.

One of the most visible elements of that transportation is the extended stop sign arm with flashing red lights that indicate a bus has stopped to open its doors and let a student on or off. State law requires that once those safety measures are initiated, all traffic on the road must come to a halt.

On Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals clarified when drivers have to stop their vehicles for that safety measure. In doing so, the three-member panel overturned a jury’s guilty verdict against a Baxter, Minn., woman for not stopping for a school bus.

The opinion, written by Judge Louise Bjorkman, focuses on what exactly the Legislature meant when it wrote that drivers must stop once a bus “extends” its stop-signal arm.

In 2024, Allison Waln was charged with failing to stop for a school bus in Crow Wing County. She fought the charge, and a one-day trial commenced. Evidence showed that the bus driver had turned on amber flashing lights when Waln’s truck was 200 or 300 feet away before bringing the bus to a complete stop. When the bus driver opened the door — triggering the extension of its stop-signal arm, red flashing lights and a video recording — Waln’s truck continued its approach. The bus driver then physically held his arm up to stop any children from getting off the bus as Waln’s truck drove past. The driver wrote a report, and Waln was given a ticket after police reviewed the incident. Waln admitted to police she was driving the truck.

At trial, she testified that she drove by the bus but did not see any yellow flashing lights or the stop-signal arm, and red lights only appeared once she was already passing the bus.

The jury found Waln guilty, and she was told to pay a $660 fine. Waln appealed.

The Crow Wing County Attorney’s Office had argued that Minnesota legal statutes show drivers need to stop when there is any type of “observable extension of the stop-signal arm.” Waln’s attorneys with the Office of the Minnesota Appellate Public Defender argued that the law clearly shows that extended means fully extended.

In trying to parse out legislative meaning, the appeals panel looked to various definitions of the word extended and found they all evoked “an image of something lengthened to its fullest extent.”

The court also noted that the legal statute clarifies that a driver can only resume driving once the stop-signal arm is fully retracted onto the school bus. Bjorkman wrote in the opinion that extension and retraction of the arm are mirrors of each other and should be enforced as such.

Whether Waln was within 20 feet when the arm reached full extension — the legal distance required to stop — was the next question before the appeals panel.

Video evidence showed that Waln’s truck was adjacent to the stop-signal arm almost immediately once it reached full extension. The bus driver testified that Waln did not stop despite being more than 20 feet away when the stop-signal arm was extended.

That was enough for the court to conclude that the jury’s finding of guilty was not supported by the evidence.

Erik Withall, the assistant state public defender who represented Waln, said the traffic violation is a serious one with a $500 mandatory minimum penalty and the potential for jail time.

“These things are enforced by camera with a laser beam,” Withall said. “What’s interesting about the facts of this case is the police officer made some comment that didn’t make it into trial that this was actually kind of a close one.

“I can’t talk about her subjective reasons for appealing,” he said of Waln, “but there are hefty penalties for violating this law, and she did not violate it.”