Gov. Mark Dayton violated the Minnesota Constitution when he vetoed funding for the Minnesota House and Senate this year, a Ramsey County judge ruled Wednesday.

“As a result of violating the Separation of Powers clause of the Minnesota Constitution, the governor’s line-item vetoes are unconstitutional, null and void,” Judge John Guthmann wrote.

He ordered the Legislature’s funding restored, but the final decision will be made by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Dayton said Wednesday that he’ll appeal Guthmann’s ruling.

Under a prior order from Guthmann, the Legislature is being temporarily funded until a final decision is reached on whether Dayton’s veto was constitutional.

The legal battle’s roots lie in Dayton’s decision in late May to use his line-item veto power to strike the funding for the House and Senate from a budget bill he signed into law. The veto affected $130 million for the next two years of the Legislature.

The governor said he would be willing to call a special session to restore that funding only if lawmakers agreed to concessions: undoing several other provisions Dayton had signed into law despite disliking them. The Republican-controlled House and Senate refused and sued to overturn Dayton’s veto.

“The bottom line is Minnesotans won today,” House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, we had to go to court to right this wrong, but we’re happy for Minnesotans that their voice here at the Capitol has been restored.”

In a statement, Dayton didn’t criticize the ruling’s logic. But he criticized Republicans for not resolving the dispute by making policy concessions.

“It is unfortunate that Republican legislative leaders are using this ruling to avoid completing their work by correcting their serious errors in the last legislative session,” Dayton said.

Guthmann found that Dayton “effectively abolished the Legislature” by vetoing funding for the House and Senate, because “legislators have a constitutional right to be paid.” He also found that the Dayton veto was problematic because he didn’t object to the Legislature’s funding in itself — he was merely using it as leverage to get other concessions.

“The court’s ruling is by no means intended to prevent governors from issuing a line-item veto of the Legislature’s appropriation if they actually object to the manner in which the Legislature funded itself,” Guthmann wrote. “No such concern exists in this case because the governor concedes his vetoes had nothing to do with the Legislature’s appropriation.”

The judge also ruled that governors are free to use vetoes to coerce the Legislature — “so long as vetoing the appropriation does not nullify or effectively eliminate a branch of government or a constitutional office.”

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