Court ruling means campaign speech is lawless

The Faribault County attorney will not pursue criminal charges against the creator of an accusatory website against Freeborn County sheriff candidate Kurt Freitag.

The website, which has become a campaign issue in the race between deputy Freitag and incumbent Freeborn County Sheriff Bob Kindler, came to light in September.

Freitag has accused one of Kindler’s supporters of making the site, saying the creator possibly worked in the Sheriff’s Office.

Freitag, when contacted about the outcome Friday, expressed disappointment.

“If you run for office, you’re fair game,” Freitag said. “Anyone can say any allegation they want about you, and there’s no accountability.”

Faribault County Attorney Troy Timmerman said his decision was based on a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling Sept. 2 that struck down Minnesota’s fair campaign practices law.

“Minnesota’s interest in having a fair election and in preventing false campaign speech was not strong enough to override the protections of the First Amendment,” Timmerman said, noting that campaign speech is one of the most protected types of speech.

Minnesota previously had a

statute that made it a gross misdemeanor to prepare or disseminate statements that are knowingly false in a campaign for a candidate or ballot question.

Complaints are taken to the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings for first review before being sent back to a county attorney for possible criminal prosecution.

The Court of Appeals case was filed by two Minnesota-based advocacy organizations founded to oppose school-funding ballot initiatives. The organizations claimed that a provision of the Minnesota Fair Campaign Practices Act inhibited their free speech rights.

The ruling in September struck down the former statute, meaning the lack of campaign speech laws in Minnesota makes it like the Wild West in terms of what people can say or publish for election-related content.

Though the case was different from the one in Freeborn County, Timmerman said the ruling here applied the same. He said the court found the best response to false campaign speech is counter speech.

J.D. Carlson, deputy director of police with the Albert Lea Police Department, the Albert Lea Police Department conducted a preliminary investigation in the case to identify if there was a potential violation, and then the case was forwarded to the Faribault County Attorney’s Office. The Office of Administrative Hearings reviewed the case before sending it back to the county attorney.

Timmerman said if it weren’t campaign season and someone said something like what was found on the anti-Freitag website, there is a possibility that person could be charged with criminal defamation.

Kindler said he found out about the results of the county attorney’s review this week.

“That doesn’t preclude me from investigating the matter further to see if there’s any possible violations within the Sheriff’s Office,” Kindler said.

The Tribune has not printed the website’s address because, for sake the of newspaper ethics, it doesn’t point people toward defamatory content.