A federal court has dismissed the state police union’s challenge of a provision in a new police accountability law that would give the public access to information in trooper personnel files that had been sealed by the union’s contract.
The troopers argued the U.S. Constitution’s contract clause limits the ability of state’s to interfere with valid contracts. But U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. ruled Wednesday that the national outrage over police tactics provoked by the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd gave the Governor and Legislature a “legitimate public purpose” in enacting the law that amends the three-year contract the union negotiated last year.