Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
Strikeaugust Anyone?
Let’s hear it for the workers at 4712 Cedar Ave. Yesterday they began the first-ever strike by employees of a Minnesota Starbucks, reports Max Nesternak at the Minnesota Reformer. The move is coordinated with Starbucks employees in several other cities, and workers say it’s to protest management failing to negotiate a contract and arbitrarily changing store hours. When Racket spoke with the organizers back when they first announced their intent to form a union, Cedar Avenue barista Kasey Copeland told us, “We want to make the company better by having a voice.” Starbucks management apparently has other ideas. “It’s obviously just them trying to push us around and see if they can get away with it,” barista Emily Mahoney told the Reformer yesterday. The two-day strike continues through today. Plenty of other places to get coffee.
Again With the “Voter Fraud”
Midterms are coming up, and that means cynical Republican operatives and the factually challenged true believers under their sway are gonna shout “fraud” in the hope of restricting voting rights. Emboldened by the Trump-fostered lie that the 2020 election was stolen, the kooks have expanded their ground game drastically nationwide. As Briana Bierschbach and Jessie Van Berkel report at the Strib, that most certainly includes Minnesota. Election managers in counties throughout the state are beleaguered by fraud-obsessed complainants barraging them with flimsy hypotheticals about stolen elections. (There’s also a handy little infographic showing you exactly how safe your ballot is. Very!) “Sometimes it feels like it's a whack-a-mole," said Hennepin County Elections Manager Ginny Gelms.
What Exactly Is Minnesota’s Abortion Law?
A very bad thing happened recently (the overturning of Roe v. Wade) and a very good thing (the state of Minnesota is not appealing a state court ruling that struck down most restrictions on abortion in Minnesota). So what exactly is the state of abortion law in Minnesota? Greta Kaul at Minnpost dug into it. The big takeaway: The Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion under the state constitution in Doe v. Gomez is wide-ranging, not only permitting but guaranteeing access. A few state laws hindering access, including a state reporting requirement and the burial of fetal tissue beyond a certain stage, still linger. But as U of M law prof Jill Hasday puts it: “Current Minnesota constitutional law is very hostile to restrictions on abortion, period.”
Separation of Church and Pharmacy
Jury selection begins today in a long-delayed trial involving a rural Minnesotan pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a morning-after pill, John Reinan reports at the Strib. Three years ago, Andrea Anderson brought a prescription for the drug Ella to the Thrifty White (really) pharmacy in McGregor, Minnesota. There, pharmacist George Badeaux told her his religious beliefs prevented him from filling the prescription but that the pharmacist working the next day could fill it—unless the current snowstorm kept the pharmacist from getting to work. He offered to send the prescription to Brainerd, over 50 miles away. (Anderson eventually schlepped out there in the storm.) Now, in what may be the first case of its kind, Anderson is suing under the Minnesota Human Rights Act, alleging gender discrimination. One quibble with the story: Why did Reinan feet the need to ID Anderson as “a mother of five”? Not! Relevant!
