After a local TV anchor said St. Paul officers looked up her private driver’s license information for non-law enforcement purposes, the city council agreed Wednesday to settle her federal lawsuit for $33,000.

“Fox 9 Morning News” co-host Alix Kendall sued St. Paul and nearly 200 cities, counties and other agencies throughout Minnesota in 2014. The lawsuit claimed Kendall’s driver’s license information was accessed more than 3,800 times during a 10-year period, but courts dismissed most of the instances, saying they were past the statute of limitations, said Sonia Miller-Van Oort, Kendall’s attorney.

Miller-Van Oort’s law firm, Sapientia Law Group, has handled about 35 similar lawsuits, and she said Kendall “was probably the biggest victim that was discovered in the state of Minnesota whose information was being rampantly accessed by law enforcement.”

The lawsuit said the searches were not for any legitimate law enforcement purpose. Miller-Van Oort said they believe officers were looking up Kendall’s information so much because she is “someone who is visible to the public, an attractive woman on the news and people see her and recognize her. But because someone chooses to be a news reporter does not mean they’ve authorized others to intrude in their personal life.”

Kendall’s initial lawsuit said St. Paul officers looked up her driver’s license information 225 times, though only a handful of instances remained on the table after the ruling about statute of limitations, Miller-Van Oort said.

The settlement covers the lawsuit’s claims that two officers viewed Kendall’s driver’s license information in April 2010, April 2011 and September 2011.

St. Paul “expressly denied (Kendall’s) allegations and liability for (her) alleged damages,” according to the settlement agreement. But the city decided to settle “simply based on avoiding more costs and the risk of continued litigation,” said Interim St. Paul City Attorney Laura Pietan.

The other cities and counties initially sued have been dismissed from the lawsuit and Minneapolis is the only one remaining, Miller-Van Oort said. They are in the process of finalizing a settlement with Minneapolis, she said Wednesday.

Kendall’s lawsuit claimed that officers violated the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act and her civil rights.

“More disturbing, these personnel, charged with protecting and serving the public, knowingly abused their position of trust to unlawfully peek behind the curtain into the private life of Kendall,” her lawsuit said.

Driver’s-license data available to law enforcement includes home address, photographs, date of birth, height, weight and potentially medical information.

Others have filed lawsuits similar to Kendall’s in lawsuits in recent years. A state audit found that more than half of Minnesota law enforcement personnel with access to driver’s license data might have made inappropriate searches. Related Articles Minneapolis and St. Paul to add 70 electric car charging stations

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The lawsuits have “exposed practices that weren’t being monitored” by law enforcement agencies, Miller-Van Oort said. And she said a majority of the settlements have required additional training for officers and policy changes, “so this could be rectified and the misconduct stopped.”

Last February, the St. Paul City Council approved a $29,500 settlement in a lawsuit brought by a Minneapolis police officer who accused St. Paul officers, and others, of snooping in her personal driver’s license information.

In 2011, a former St. Paul police officer disclosed that her data had been looked up more than 550 times by fellow officers; she settled with St. Paul for $385,000 and with other cities for a total of more than $1 million.