Kern v. Harpstead
- Katherine Menendez
- 0:24-cv-00348
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 2
In Kern v. Gandhi, Judge Menendez denied Defendants’ original motion to dismiss as moot because an amended complaint and superseding motion replaced it.
Cody Raymond Kern and the defendants, including Shireen Gandhi and the State of Minnesota; the order determines how the defendants’ two dismissal motions will proceed but does not resolve the remaining dismissal arguments.
What happened
Cody Raymond Kern sued Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi, who was automatically substituted for former Commissioner Jodi Harpstead. Kern filed an amended complaint while the defendants’ original motion to dismiss was partly under consideration.
The amended complaint added allegations but did not withdraw the claims challenged in the original motion. The defendants then filed a second motion that largely superseded the first and repeated arguments from it, including arguments the court had already rejected.
Judge Katherine Menendez denied the original motion to dismiss as moot. She said the unresolved arguments from the first motion and the arguments in the second motion would be addressed together in a later order after the scheduled hearing.
The detailed version
- Kern v. Harpstead · No. 0:24-cv-00348
- Katherine Menendez
- Feb. 24, 2025
Background
Cody Raymond Kern brought this case against Shireen Gandhi in her capacity as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services and against the State of Minnesota. The opinion explains that Gandhi became the department’s temporary commissioner on February 3, 2025, and was automatically substituted under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25(d) for former defendant Jodi Harpstead.
Motions and amended complaint
The defendants initially moved to dismiss Kern’s complaint. At oral argument, the court partially denied that motion and took the remainder under advisement. Kern later received permission to file a First Amended Complaint. The amended pleading added allegations but did not withdraw the claims challenged in the original motion.
The defendants then filed a second motion to dismiss directed at the amended complaint. That motion largely superseded the original motion and repeated arguments from the first motion, including arguments the court had already denied.
Ruling
The court denied the original motion to dismiss as moot because the defendants had filed a largely superseding motion. The court stated that the unresolved arguments from the original motion, along with the arguments in the second motion, would be addressed in a single later order after the April 29, 2025 hearing. This order did not decide those remaining dismissal arguments.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.