Attorney General Ellison publishes Minnesota Law Review article on the use of civil law to improve public safety

Alongside holding individual offenders accountable for criminal acts, makes case for ‘regulatory justice’ approach that uses consumer protection and common law to also hold corporate actors accountable for practices that enable criminal acts and profit from criminal harm

Encourages attorneys general to exercise civil-law authority to keep public safe

June 2, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has authored a new article in the Minnesota Law Review, published on May 29, in which he argues that civil law is an effective and often underutilized tool to improve public safety. In his article, titled “Preventing Harm at the Source: The Case for Regulatory Justice”, Attorney General Ellison discusses how civil law, including consumer-protection law, can be used to hold corporations accountable when they facilitate criminal harm. Attorney General Ellison adopts the term “regulatory justice” for this approach and reviews several case studies from his office’s work that illustrate how regulatory justice can be used to reduce crime and keep people safe.

Attorney General Ellison notes that this use of civil law is not intended to be a substitute for traditional criminal prosecution: individuals who commit crimes must continue to be held accountable in the criminal-justice system. Attorney General Ellison argues, however, that in addition to individual accountability, we can go upstream from where individual crimes happen to also hold manufacturers, distributors, and retailers accountable for practices that facilitate or profit from criminal harm, using consumer-protection law and complimentary civil common-law doctrines.

In Minnesota, state law strictly limits the criminal authority of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Most felonies and misdemeanors are in Minnesota are prosecuted by county and city attorneys. The Minnesota Attorney General has jurisdiction to prosecute criminal felonies and misdemeanors only in three circumstances: 1) Medicaid fraud, after money has already gone out the door, 2) when a county attorney requests the Attorney General’s assistance in prosecuting a specific case, and 3) when the Governor assigns a case to the Attorney General. In the context of this limited criminal authority, Attorney General Ellison has used the tools at his disposal in civil and consumer-protection law to develop and put into practice his innovative regulatory justice approach to improving public safety. 

In his article, Attorney General Ellison begins by discussing the limitations of attempting to prevent crime by exclusively focusing on individual offenders and ignoring root causes and other structural issues, like markets and corporate actors whose choices set in motion a chain of actions that led to the commission of a violent or property crime. He then examines the tools available in civil law to help address those root causes. Next, Attorney General Ellison provides several case studies in how he successfully utilized a regulatory justice approach to crime prevention in Minnesota. 

Below are summaries of two of those case studies. For further case studies and more detailed analysis, see Attorney General Ellison’s full article here.

State vs. Fleet Farm

In 2021, a shooting at the Truck Park bar in Saint Paul took the life of Marquisha Wiley and injured 14 other Minnesotans. Law enforcement investigated the crime and arrested and prosecuted the men who carried out the shooting. Law enforcement also traced the commercial path of the guns found at the scene. One led back to a straw buyer, Jerome Horton, who was criminally prosecuted as well. However, the chain goes back further than Horton. 

Retailer Fleet Farm sold 24 firearms to Horton in just four months and ignored critical warnings that he was likely to turn around and sell those firearms to people who could not legally own a gun, including Horton snapping photos of available firearms while browsing Fleet Farm’s inventory. 

Attorney General Ellison launched an investigation into Fleet Farm, which uncovered that Fleet Farm stores in Minnesota sold 37 guns to straw buyers over just 16 months. Attorney General Ellison sued Fleet Farm for negligently selling firearms to straw purchasers and won a $1 million settlement that also required to make significant improvements to their detection and prevention systems to deter future straw purchasers.

The changes Fleet Farm is required to implement as a result of the settlement will help prevent guns from falling into the hands of dangerous individuals, making Minnesotans safer. In taking these actions, Attorney General Ellison used civil law enforcement tools to pursue regulatory justice. In doing so, he held a bad actor accountable that was contributing to crime in Minnesota and compelled them to change their behavior in order to prevent future crimes from taking place.

Auto Theft: Kia and Hyundai

In 2021, videos illustrating the relative ease of stealing Kia and Hyundai vehicles went viral on social media, leading to a dramatic surge in the thefts of these vehicles. In July 2022, a stolen gray Kia crashed into a vehicle driven by Phoua Thao Hang and her husband in Saint Paul, killing Phoua instantly. The stolen Kia was one of 468 stolen Kias and Hyundais in Saint Paul in 2022, compared to just 49 the year before. In Minneapolis, police investigated 4,520 Kia and Hyundai thefts in 2023, up from just 250 in 2021. Similar increases in Kia and Hyundai thefts were taking place nationwide.

It's easy to trace a line from the viral videos to the individuals who stole vehicles and sometimes caused grievous harm in the process. However, the story actually starts with cost-cutting measures taken by Kia and Hyundai. For decades, auto manufacturers have known that engine immobilizer technology substantially reduces auto thefts, leading to the technology becoming standard in almost all automobiles sold in the United States. By 2015, 96% of vehicles told in the United States had engine immobilizers. However, for Kia and Hyundai, that number was just 26%.

This raises an obvious question: why? Kia and Hyundai certainly had the ability to manufacture cars with engine immobilizers. Europe and Canada require vehicles to have engine immobilizers, and Kia and Hyundai complied with those requirements. Kia and Hyundai were also aware that immobilizers substantially reduce auto thefts.

The reason Kia and Hyundai vehicles sold in the United States largely lacked engine immobilizers was profit, plain and simple. Not including immobilizers saved on manufacturing costs.

In March 2023, Attorney General Ellison launched a civil investigation into Kia and Hyundai’s sale of vehicles to Minnesota consumers that lacked this industry-standard anti-theft technology. Attorney General Ellison believed it was likely that Hyundai and Kia engaged in deceptive, fraudulent, and unfair conduct by starkly departing from industry standard and failing to equip their vehicle series sold in the United States with an engine immobilizer, and that Hyundai and Kia violated Minnesota’s public nuisance statutes.

Hyundai’s and Kia’s decision to maximize profits over safety by failing to equip their vehicles with anti-theft technology has created ongoing harm to Minnesotans and has impacted the state financially, incurring substantial costs from investigating, policing, and remediating the surge of Kia and Hyundai vehicle thefts.

In October 2025, Attorney General Ellison reached a settlement with Hyundai and Kia, requiring that the companies provide theft-preventing hardware modifications to affected vehicles at no charge to consumers. Kia and Hyundai estimated the hardware modifications could cost as much as $500 million. Consumers whose cars are damaged or stolen will be compensated, and the settlement requires Hyundai and Kia to install engine immobilizers into every vehicle sold in the United States. Once again, Attorney General Ellison used civil law tools and a regulatory justice approach to go upstream from individual crimes and prevent wrongdoing that made such crimes either possible or far easier to commit and, in doing so, improved public safety in Minnesota.

Other case studies provided by Attorney General Ellison in his article include his lawsuit against Glock for manufacturing and selling semi-automatic handguns that Glock knows can easily be converted into illegal machine guns, his lawsuits against opioid manufacturers for creating a crisis of addition and misuse by aggressively marketing drugs they knew were highly addictive, and his use of nuisance laws to reduce crime at Winner Gas and Merwin Liquors, which used to be a hotbed of criminal activity in Minneapolis.

Attorney General Ellison closes his article by urging other attorneys general to adopt a regulatory justice approach to helping prevent crime and protect the public, writing: