Becky Z. Dernbach at Sahan reports: “The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a Minneapolis taxpayer does not have standing to challenge a provision in the district’s teacher union contract aimed at protecting teachers of color.”
KARE 11’s Raya Quttaineh reports: “As wildfires continue to grow across the Los Angeles area, a Minnesota native who moved to California in 2000 learned her home was destroyed through a phone call from a friend of her husband’s in the Los Angeles Fire Department.
“Julie Locke, who was born and raised in a northwest Minneapolis suburb, moved to Los Angeles for work after completing law school at the University of Minnesota.”
Frederick Melo at the Pioneer Press reports: “City officials tagged dozens of tents in the area below East Seventh Street and Payne Avenue on Tuesday morning with notices to vacate, giving residents of what’s believed to be the city’s largest or second-largest homeless encampment until Jan. 16 to find somewhere else to stay.”
Matt Sepic at MPR reports: “The mother of a man killed by St. Paul police in 2017 returned to federal court on Wednesday for a second trial in her lawsuit against the city.
“In 2023, a jury awarded Kim Handy Jones $1.5 million in punitive damages plus $10 million in compensatory damages after finding St. Paul Police Officer Nathaniel Younce civilly liable for fatally shooting her son Cordale Handy, 29.
“But in February, U.S. District Judge David Doty sharply reduced the compensatory portion to $2.5 million.”
Via Insight News, Mshale’s Edwin Okong’o reports on the journey on one of the state’s newest representatives. “If Paul Wellstone, the late U.S. senator from Minnesota, is looking down from the heavens, he is smiling and happy to see what became of the young Kenyan woman whose family he saved from deportation decades ago.
“That young woman was Huldah Momanyi Hiltsley, who made history on Tuesday. When voters chose her to represent District 38A in the Minnesota House of Representatives, Hiltsley became the first Kenyan immigrant to win a state assembly seat anywhere in the United States.”
Mshale’s Richard Ooga reports: “Brooklyn Park City Council swore-in its youngest city council member on Monday, Jan. 6.
“Amanda Cheng Xiong, 22, was born and raised in the city by her Hmong refugee parents. She beat incumbent Boyd Morson in a landslide in November to represent the East District.”
