# Rita Ann Stevens v. Commissioner of Public Safety

> Court of Appeals of Minnesota · July 14, 2014 · 850 N.W.2d 717

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9800378

## Case

- **Full name:** Rita Ann STEVENS, Petitioner, Appellant, v. COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SAFETY, Respondent
- **Court:** Court of Appeals of Minnesota
- **Decided:** July 14, 2014
- **Citations:** 850 N.W.2d 717; 2014 Minn. App. LEXIS 69; 2014 WL 3396522
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Chutich
- **Judges:** Johnson, Rodenberg, Chutich
- **Cited by:** 49 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9800378

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that “Minnesota’s implied-consent statute does not violate the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine by authorizing the commissioner of public safety to revoke the driver’s license of a person who has been arrested for DWI and has refused to submit to chemical testing”
- concluding that a warrantless search under the implied-consent statute would not violate the Fourth Amendment but expressly limiting that conclusion to "a civil action in which [driver sought] to rescind the temporary revocation of her driver's license"
- holding that the implied-consent statute does not place an unconstitutional condition upon the exercise of Fourth-Amendment rights
- holding that Minnesota Implied Consent Law does not violate the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine
- concluding 5 that district court’s findings allowed an inference that the driver had a reasonable amount of time to provide a urine sample, so that the absence of a sample was intentional

## Opinion text

CHUTICH, Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that sufficient evidence supports the district court’s finding that Stevens refused to submit to chemical testing and that her unconstitutional-conditions argument fails. I write separately concerning the unconstitutional-conditions discussion because I would base my rejection of that doctrine solely on the rationale stated in Part D of *732 the majority’s opinion. I agree with the majority that the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Brooks, 838 N.W.2d 563 (Minn.2013), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 1799 , 188 L.Ed.2d 759 (2014), prevents Stevens from establishing that the implied-consent statute coerced her into surrendering her Fourth Amendment right in a way that offends the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9800378. Public record. Not legal advice.