Minnesota’s U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer has called for the state to repeal its transgender refuge law after this week’s deadly Annunciation Catholic Church shooting.
Emmer, the number three Republican in the House, urged the repeal Thursday as many conservatives continue to single out the transgender community in the wake of Wednesday’s attack in Minneapolis, blaming Robin Westman’s mental health as the root cause of the shooting.
According to court records, the 23-year-old’s mother applied to change her child’s name in 2019 because Westman identified as female. Westman also identified as female on her 2023 driver’s license.
Passed in 2023, Minnesota’s transgender refuge law gives protection to transgender people and their families to seek gender-affirming care in the state and avoid extradition orders and legal repercussions for doing so. It’s unknown what level of such care Westman could have received.
“We got to respect everyone,” Emmer told the New York Post. “We got to have compassion for everyone. But we got to understand that we’ve got some serious mental health issues that are being exacerbated by these types of messages by people like [Gov. Tim Walz] and everybody who supported that law.”
Walz signed the bill into law, Democrats narrowly control the state Senate and the House is likely to go back to a tie pending an upcoming special election, so any attempt to repeal the law would likely be unsuccessful.
“They should immediately repeal it, but they won’t,” Emmer said. “They have been encouraging this type of confusion.”
Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the state’s first transgender lawmaker and the bill’s sponsor, said she is not worried that the threat to repeal the law will gain traction. But she said she does worry about what the Trump administration may do to roll back transgender protections.
