The Minnesota state statutes are the codified, topically organized body of the state’s general and permanent laws, published officially by the Office of the Revisor of Statutes at revisor.mn.gov.1Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Office of the Revisor of Statutes To find a specific law, you locate its chapter and section number; to read it, you work through the numbered subdivisions where the operative language lives; to cite it, you use the format “Minnesota Statutes [year], section [number], subdivision [number].”
How the Code Is Organized
The statutes run from Chapter 1 through Chapter 648, arranged by subject so that related laws sit together. Chapter 541 covers time limits for filing civil lawsuits.2Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statutes Chapter 541 – Limitation of Time, Commencing Actions Chapter 609 covers criminal offenses. Chapter 645 covers how statutes are interpreted.
Within each chapter, individual laws carry a decimal number. Section 609.02 means Chapter 609, section .02. Each section then breaks down into numbered subdivisions, and the subdivisions are where you find the actual rule. A citation that stops at the section level often points you to a definitional heading rather than the specific provision you need.
New legislation slots into this framework rather than piling up at the end of the code. When the legislature creates a new criminal offense, the Revisor places it among the existing sections of Chapter 609. The topical arrangement holds even as the code grows.
Finding a Statute
The Revisor’s website is the official digital publication of the code and has been the compiler of the statutes since 1939.1Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Office of the Revisor of Statutes Third-party legal databases carry copies, but those versions are unofficial and sometimes lag behind recent amendments. When accuracy matters, start at revisor.mn.gov.
Several tools help you get to a specific provision:
- Keyword search across the full body of law, useful when you know a distinctive phrase in the statute.3Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Statutes Keyword Search
- Topical index, useful when you know the general subject area but not the section.
- Popular Names of Acts index, which links common names like “Minnesota Human Rights Act” or “Workers’ Compensation Act” directly to their chapter and section numbers.4Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. 2025 Minnesota Statutes Index – Popular Names of Acts
Printed volumes are also maintained at the Minnesota State Law Library and at public law libraries around the state, which can help when you need a historical edition or a physical backup.
Reading a Section
Read down into the subdivisions. Section 609.02 illustrates why: it defines the state’s offense classifications, and each subdivision carries different legal consequences.5Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statutes 609.02 – Definitions A petty misdemeanor is not classified as a crime and carries a maximum penalty of a $300 fine with no jail time. A misdemeanor is punishable by up to 90 days in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. A gross misdemeanor sits between a misdemeanor and a felony, with a maximum fine of $3,000 and a maximum jail sentence of 364 days.6Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statutes 609.0341 – Maximum Fines for Gross Misdemeanors and Felonies A felony is any offense carrying a potential prison sentence of one year or more.
Details in a subdivision often reflect deliberate legislative choices. The gross misdemeanor ceiling of 364 days rather than a full year exists because a 365-day maximum triggers automatic deportation under federal immigration law regardless of the actual time served. Cite the wrong subdivision, or skim past one, and you can miss the point of the whole provision.
Citing a Statute
A proper citation contains four pieces: the words “Minnesota Statutes,” the year of the edition, the word “section,” and the section number with any subdivision. A reference to the definitions in the Criminal Code reads “Minnesota Statutes 2025, section 609.02, subdivision 3.”7Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. Citing Minnesota Legal Sources
The year matters. The same section number can contain different language depending on when the legislature last amended it, so a citation without a year is ambiguous about which version you mean. If you are relying on a statute in a filing or a letter, make sure the edition year matches the language you actually read.
Checking Whether You Have the Current Version
At the end of every statutory section, a history note lists each session law that created or amended the provision, giving the year, chapter number, and section of the relevant session law.8Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. Legislative History Step by Step Reading down the history note tells you when the language you are looking at was last changed and lets you trace how it has evolved.
The Revisor also publishes a “Statutes Changed” table showing which sections were modified during the most recent legislative session, which is the fastest way to see whether a section you rely on has just been amended.
The raw acts themselves live in a separate publication called the Laws of Minnesota, commonly called session laws, which record every bill the governor signed in chronological order.9Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Session Laws After a session ends, the Revisor codifies each new act into the appropriate chapter and section of the permanent statutes. Not every act makes the trip. Appropriations, proposed constitutional amendments, local laws, and provisions with a limited duration stay in the session laws and never appear in the statutes, so if you cannot find a bill in the code, look there.
Effective dates trip people up. Unless the act specifies otherwise, general laws take effect on August 1 following final passage, and appropriation bills take effect on July 1, in both cases at 12:01 a.m.10Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statutes 645.02 – Effective Date and Time of Laws Many bills set their own effective dates, so check the act itself rather than assuming the default applies.
When the Statute Alone Isn’t Enough
The bare text of a statute does not always answer your question, and two other sources fill common gaps.
The first is Minnesota Statutes Annotated, an unofficial edition containing the same statutory text as the official code plus research material: summaries of court decisions interpreting each section, cross-references to related laws, and other practice aids.11Minnesota State Law Library. Sources of Law If you need to know how judges have actually applied a section, the annotations point you to the cases. Annotated sets are available through commercial legal databases and at the Minnesota State Law Library.
The second is Minnesota Rules, the separate compilation of administrative rules adopted by state agencies.12Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Administrative Rules Statutes often set broad policy and leave operational details to agencies, and the resulting rules carry the full force and effect of law. Violating a rule can result in penalties, loss of licensure, or other enforcement action. Agencies can only make rules where a statute delegates the authority, and the rulemaking process itself is governed by Chapter 14 of the statutes.13Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statutes 14.05 – Adoption of Rules When a statute leaves a practical question unanswered, the corresponding administrative rule is often where the answer sits.