Associated Press

More than 40 Democratic legislators, along with educators and parents, said Thursday they don’t support a special legislative session over a new law limiting use of physical holds on students in schools, which has led to some law enforcement agencies pausing school resource officer programs.

It came a week after top Republican legislators called for a special session to repeal the new wording.

Gov. Tim Walz, DFL, said Tuesday that “some (school) districts have worked it out and they believe the language is clarified” and others have not. “… I’m certainly open to anything that provides a solution to that, if that means the Legislature working it out to make sure we have it.”

Educators and parents said at a news conference last Thursday at the Minnesota Capitol that the new law provides important safeguards and shouldn’t be changed.

Since 2015, state law has said school district staff are prohibited from using prone restraint as an emergency restraint for students with disabilities, and physical holding of such students can only happen in emergencies.

“Most disabilities are not visible,” said Abby Rombalski, a longtime educator, organizer with Education for Liberation Minnesota and parent in Robbinsdale Area Schools. “When Minnesota legislators agreed to the decision to ban chokeholds from Minnesota schools earlier this year, they were protecting all children from harm.”

What the new law says

A bill, which was approved in the last legislative session and signed by Walz, added new language to state law that says “an employee or agent of a district, including a school resource officer, security personnel or police officer contracted with a district, shall not use prone restraint,” meaning putting a student into a face-down position.

Also added to the law was the following wording: “An employee or agent of a district, including a school resource officer, security personnel or police officer contracted with a district, shall not inflict any form of physical holding that restricts or impairs a pupil’s ability to breathe; restricts or impairs a pupil’s ability to communicate distress; places pressure or weight on a pupil’s head, throat, neck, chest, lungs, sternum, diaphragm, back or abdomen; or results in straddling a pupil’s torso.”

The law says school employees, bus drivers and other agents of the district “may use reasonable force when it is necessary under the circumstances to restrain a student to prevent bodily harm or death to the student or to another.”

The Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association said in a statement last month that they were still seeking clarity, “including what is acceptable under the new law in situations that do not present a threat of bodily harm or death but are clearly violations of state law.”

The association released the statement after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued a legal opinion, which included: “The Legislature did not change the types of reasonable force that school staff and agents are authorized to use in responding to a situation involving a threat of bodily harm or death. Of course, what force is ‘reasonable’ is not defined in law and is determined on a case-by-case basis.”

At the end of Ellison’s analysis to Education Commissioner Willie Jett, he wrote that the chiefs association, League of Minnesota Cities and Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association “raised other important questions about the standards applicable to school resource officers or other contracted peace officers at school events. Those questions are beyond the scope of your August 18 request and more appropriately directed at the Legislature.”

An analysis by the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust offered various examples under the new law: If a student is screaming in a lunchroom and throwing trays on the floor, the behavior doesn’t involve a risk of bodily harm or death and a SRO may not use force to control the student’s behavior or force to arrest the student. On the other hand, if a student is using a metal bar to attack windows and glass in a school and it reasonably appears to a SRO that the broken glass is placing the student and others at risk of bodily harm, the SRO may use reasonable force if necessary to restrain the student.