Earlier this week we posted Murdock city council approves permit for whites-only Asatru Folk Assembly to re-purpose church.
In Friday's Star Tribune, John Reinan reports in Council's anonymous vote on white supremacist church may have violated Minnesota's open meeting law:
An anonymous City Council vote on allowing a white supremacist church to locate in Murdock, Minn., violated the state's open meeting law.
That's according to several experts and to the language of the law itself, which states that local governments meeting remotely must vote by individual roll call, so that their audience can clearly understand how each member voted.
The Murdock city attorney called the council's action "a matter of interpretation" and said the group had no intention of obscuring its actions. The meeting's minutes, published Thursday, included how each member voted.
Under Minnesota's open meeting law, during a remote meeting "all votes must be 'conducted by roll call, so each member's vote on each issue can be identified and recorded,' " said Leita Walker, a media law attorney in Minneapolis, quoting from the statute. "The [Murdock] City Council violated the law."
On Wednesday, the Murdock council voted to grant a conditional use permit to the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), a Nordic heritage religion that has been identified as a white supremacist organization by religious scholars as well as by other heathen religious groups.
Read the rest at the Star Tribune.
Back in July, we broke the story of how the Baldurshof: Third Hof of the Asatru Folk Assembly [was] setting up in Murdock, Minnesota.
Related posts:
- Baldurshof: Third Hof of the Asatru Folk Assembly setting up in Murdock, Minnesota
- AFA gothar coordinator's life changed from police shoot-out & prison to serving old Gods
- Bluestem in the news: Strib & the Intercept
- Quiet protest is start of anti-hate movement in Murdock (West Central Tribune)
- WC Trib: "Murdock City Council, on advice of city attorney, not commenting" on whites-only group
- Resident: "We really don’t want to be known in Murdock as the center of hate in Minnesota"
Photo: The former Lutheran church in Murdock that's becoming a "hof" for the Asatru Folk Assembly.
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