ST. PAUL — Minnesota renters who use Section 8 housing vouchers or other subsidies now enjoy the same eviction protections as all other renters, thanks to a Minnesota Supreme Court decision reversing precedent the Court of Appeals set in 1995.
Landlords in Minnesota can evict tenants over lease violations, like using drugs or committing other crimes. But if a landlord accepts a rent payment after finding out about a lease violation, they can’t evict the tenant over that specific breach of the lease. In other words, by accepting a rent payment despite knowing about a lease violation, the landlord waives their right to evict.
This protection did not apply to renters who received public subsidies, including Section 8 housing vouchers, until Wednesday.
“This case actually advances the law and restores fairness to what we thought was the correct outcome prior to the court’s 1995 decision,” said Julia Zwak, managing attorney for housing at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, which brought the case.
The Minnesota Human Rights Act prohibits landlords from discriminating against tenants who receive rental assistance. Wednesday’s court decision brings case law in line with state statutes, Zwak said.
The previous precedent allowed landlords to bring evictions against subsidized renters at any time based on conduct that the landlord didn’t consider serious enough to warrant an eviction at the time, Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote in the decision.
“But even when retaliation is not in play, it is important for landlords to decide quickly whether to evict based on a known breach. When a tenant’s breach harms or disturbs other tenants, the other tenants benefit from a system that requires a landlord to act quickly,” Hennesy wrote.
The case originated from a tenant, Nichole Nalewaja, who was living in Hook & Ladder Apartments in Minneapolis and using a Section 8 voucher to cover rent. The voucher doesn’t cover utilities, however, and she fell behind on electricity bills; her electricity was shut off in early October 2022, according to court records.
Nalewaja and her boyfriend broke into the building’s electrical box to reconnect their service, but accidentally shut off others’ electricity in the process. Hook & Ladder learned about the electrical box tampering — a lease violation — on Oct. 5, 2022. The landlord continued accepting rent payments from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, which administers the rental assistance vouchers, over the following months.
The landlord initiated an eviction against Nalewaja in March 2023 over the electrical box break-in, despite having received thousands of dollars in public money after the lease violation. A renter who didn’t receive assistance likely could’ve had the case quickly dismissed because Hook & Ladder had accepted several rent payments between the time of the violation and the initiation of the eviction; Nalewaja could not.
Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid took on Nalewaja’s case and saw an opportunity to challenge the court precedent. Gary Van Winkle, a 35-year veteran Legal Aid housing attorney, carried the case all the way to the state Supreme Court — and got the outcome Legal Aid was hoping for.
“Nichole Nalewaja stood up for herself, her neighbors and for all tenants who receive housing subsidies across the state,” Van Winkle said in a statement. “She challenged a 30-year-old court precedent and she won.”
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