City of Minneapolis

In these consolidated certiorari appeals, relators Matthew Severance, Andrew Bittell, Christopher Cushenbery, Kristopher Dauble, and Ronald Stenerson challenge decisions by respondent City of Minneapolis denying their requests for defense and indemnification. Relators requested defense and indemnification in relation to a federal lawsuit alleging that relators, who were employed by the city as police officers, used unreasonable force while patrolling city streets during a citywide curfew imposed after the murder of George Floyd. The city denied relators' requests for defense and indemnification after determining that they were "guilty of malfeasance in office, willful neglect of duty, or bad faith." Minn. Stat. § 466.07, subd. 1(2) (2024). On appeal, relators argue that the city exceeded its authority in denying relators' defense-and-indemnification requests, that the city's decisions violated relators' constitutional rights to due process and equal protection, and that the decisions are unsupported by substantial evidence and are arbitrary. Severance brought a motion to supplement the record for his appeal. We construe the motion to supplement the record as a motion to complete the record, and we grant the motion. We reject relators' challenges to the city's decisions based on the city exceeding its authority and violating relators' constitutional rights because they are foreclosed by our recent decision in In re Defense & Indemnification of Brown, ___ N.W.3d ___, 2025 WL 2901740 (Minn. App. Oct. 13, 2025), or they are otherwise unavailing. And we conclude that the city's decisions to deny relators defense and indemnification are supported by substantial evidence and are not arbitrary. We therefore affirm.