Kasso v. Police Officers’ Federation of Minneapolis
- Katherine Menendez
- 0:23-cv-02777
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 20
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate.
In Kasso v. Police Officers' Federation of Minneapolis, Magistrate Judge Micko granted in part and denied in part a pro se plaintiff's motion to compel a subpoena to a non-party city, ordering production of disciplinary files for one request while denying the other 22.
Pro se litigants and other parties who use AI tools to generate legal research and citations in court filings; non-parties (such as municipalities) who receive broad third-party subpoenas in employment discrimination cases; and former public employees pursuing Title VII discrimination claims against labor unions.
What happened
Leila Kasso v. Police Officers' Federation of Minneapolis (Case No. 23-cv-2777) involves a former Minneapolis Police officer who is suing the Police Officers' Federation of Minneapolis for race and sex discrimination under Title VII — a federal law prohibiting workplace discrimination. After the court previously dismissed all of her other claims, only the Title VII claim remained. During discovery, Ms. Kasso — who is representing herself without a lawyer — served a 23-request subpoena on the non-party City of Minneapolis seeking a vast range of documents, emails, text messages, phone records, and other information.
The City of Minneapolis, which is no longer a defendant in this case, objected to all 23 requests. It argued that most of the requests were irrelevant to the remaining Title VII claim, unduly burdensome for a non-party to comply with, or sought information beyond what a Rule 45 subpoena (the procedural tool used to obtain documents from non-parties) can lawfully compel. The City also raised concerns that Ms. Kasso had cited fictitious legal cases in her motion papers — an issue the court addressed separately.
Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko granted the motion as to only one of the 23 requests: Request No. 10, which asked for disciplinary files held by the City for eight named individuals covering the years 2018 through 2020. The court found those files potentially relevant to showing whether the Federation selectively helped white male officers in workplace disputes, and ordered the City to produce them within 21 days. All other requests were denied as irrelevant to the Title VII claim, disproportionate to the needs of the case, or unduly burdensome on a non-party. Judge Micko also denied Ms. Kasso's requests for attorneys' fees and for a jury instruction penalizing the City for allegedly withholding evidence. Additionally, the court issued a formal warning that Ms. Kasso's citations to nonexistent and inaccurate legal authorities violated Rule 11 — a rule requiring honesty in court filings — and warned that continued use of fabricated, likely AI-generated citations could result in serious consequences.
The detailed version
- Kasso v. Police Officers’ Federation of Minneapolis · No. 0:23-cv-02777
- Katherine Menendez
- Oct. 21, 2025
Background
Leila Kasso is a former Minneapolis Police officer who filed suit on September 8, 2023, against the Police Officers' Federation of Minneapolis ("the Federation"), the City of Minneapolis, and the Minneapolis Police Department ("MPD"), asserting numerous claims including Title VII race and sex discrimination, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) violations, age discrimination, defamation, and retaliation. On January 5, 2025, Ms. Kasso filed a Second Amended Complaint naming only the Federation, effectively removing the City and MPD as defendants. A separate parallel lawsuit by Ms. Kasso against the City (23-cv-2782) remains ongoing.
On a motion to dismiss by the Federation, the presiding district judge (Judge Menendez) dismissed all claims except Ms. Kasso's Title VII claim for race and sex discrimination. The surviving claim alleges that the Federation undermined her employment after a medical episode and failed to assist her in re-securing her job in the same manner it would have assisted a white male officer.
During discovery, Ms. Kasso served a Rule 45 subpoena duces tecum (a court-authorized demand for documents from a non-party) on the City of Minneapolis on July 22, 2025, containing 23 separate requests for documents, electronically stored information (ESI), phone records, personnel files, and other materials. The City objected to all 23 requests on August 5, 2025 — within the 14-day window required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(d)(2)(B) — making the objections timely. Meet-and-confer efforts required by Local Rule 7.1 were unsuccessful.
Legal Standards Applied
The court applied two primary rules:
- Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1): Discovery is limited to non-privileged information relevant to any party's actual claims or defenses and proportional to the needs of the case. The party seeking discovery bears the initial burden of showing relevance; if met, the burden shifts to the resisting party to show lack of relevance or undue burden. - Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45: Governs subpoenas to non-parties. The issuing party must take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense on a non-party. Burden on a non-party carries "special weight" in the court's analysis. Courts must quash or modify subpoenas that impose undue burden or seek irrelevant information.
Rulings on Individual Requests
Requests 1–7 and 13–15 (Denied) These requests sought ESI, phone records, text messages, and all email data from nine named City employees. The court denied them on multiple grounds: (1) requests for phone numbers and contact details fall outside Rule 45's scope, which covers only documents, ESI, and tangible things; (2) the requests were largely tied to dismissed claims, not the surviving Title VII claim; (3) several requests sought information from before 2018, outside the court's determined relevant temporal scope of 2018–2020; and (4) as written, the requests were overbroad and disproportionate — the City represented that email records alone would exceed one million items. Request No. 15, which sought only contact details for a former MPD lieutenant, was denied entirely because contact information is not a document, ESI, or tangible thing under Rule 45.
Requests 8 and 20 (Denied) Request No. 8 sought Visinet Case Records related to Ms. Kasso's bicycle accident on May 20, 2018, arguing relevance to "the City's claim of defense." Request No. 20 sought Ms. Kasso's insurance coverage information from Medica Insurance. The court denied both because the City is a non-party with no defense to assert in this action, and what the City knew is relevant to the parallel City lawsuit, not this suit against the Federation.
Request 9 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought court and arbitration case numbers for seven named individuals to show they received Federation benefits she did not. The court denied this as an improper interrogatory (a written question to a party) directed at a non-party; Rule 33 governs interrogatories and applies only to parties. Court records are also publicly available, and arbitration records are more appropriately sought from the Federation itself.
Request 10 (Granted — the sole granted request) Ms. Kasso requested disciplinary files for eight named City employees — Bob Kroll, David Garman, John Laluzerne, Thomas Schmid, Pete Brazaeu, Heather Jorges, Sherry Appledorn, and Sherral Schmidt — in native format with metadata, transcripts, and outcomes. She argued these files are relevant to showing that the Federation selectively assists white male officers in workplace disputes. The court granted this request, limited to the years 2018 through 2020. The court found that Ms. Kasso met the threshold relevance showing under Rules 26 and 45 without needing to fully prove her case at the discovery stage, that privacy interests did not outweigh her interest in these files, and that the burden on the City was not undue. The City was ordered to produce responsive documents within 21 days of the order.
Request 11 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought dollar amounts paid by the City in civil and criminal cases related to nine named officers, framed as a comparative analysis of treatment of white officers. The court denied this as disproportionate to the needs of the case and noted that civil settlement records are publicly available through the City's own website, making a Rule 45 subpoena unnecessary.
Request 12 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought employment reviews of Bob Kroll and David Garman from January 1, 2005 to January 1, 2009. The court denied this as falling entirely outside the relevant temporal scope of 2018–2020.
Requests 16, 17, and 22 (Denied) Request No. 16 sought extensive medical and case records related to MPD officer Molly Fischer's concussion, including nine categories of documents. Request No. 17 sought workforce scheduling database records for the Fourth Precinct across multiple years to identify an unspecified white male officer who allegedly received Federation assistance after a head injury. Request No. 22 sought records related to MPD's Employee Intervention System (referred to in the opinion as the "Early Intervention System") and whether Ms. Kasso was referred to counseling. The court denied all three as seeking "needles in haystacks of irrelevance" — the sliver of potentially relevant information was eclipsed by irrelevant material and the burden imposed on the non-party.
Request 18 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought her own personnel and disciplinary files in native format. The court denied this request because the City represented it had already produced these materials in the parallel lawsuit, making compelled production duplicative under Rule 26(b)(2)(C).
Request 19 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought contact information for Axon Body Camera Corporation and body camera footage from her May 20, 2018 bicycle accident. The contact information request was denied as an improper interrogatory beyond Rule 45's scope. The body camera footage request was denied as duplicative because the City represented Ms. Kasso already possessed that footage.
Request 21 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought contact details for the City's email and cellphone service providers and all emails and text messages about her from any Federation representative from January 1, 2016 through May 20, 2020. The court denied this because the contact information request was an improper interrogatory, and because Ms. Kasso failed to make any threshold showing of relevance for the communications request, even though the court acknowledged those communications were likely relevant.
Request 23 (Denied) Ms. Kasso sought all ESI, documentation, medical opinions, and communications related to Risk Management, Occupational Health Consultants, and Health and Wellness with no limitation or relevance showing. The court denied this as too ambiguous to evaluate and lacking any relevance demonstration.
Other Relief Requested by Ms. Kasso
Waiver of City's Objections
Denied. The City timely objected within 14 days of service, as required by Rule 45(d)(2)(B).
Attorneys' Fees and Costs under Rule 37(a)(5)
Denied. Although the court granted the motion in part, it found that Ms. Kasso's good-faith pre-filing efforts were at best conflicting, the City's objections were substantially justified, and the motion succeeded on only 1 of 23 requests. The court expressly encouraged Ms. Kasso to review Rule 45(d)(1) and Rule 37(a)(5)(C), which permit apportionment of fees, and warned that those rules could cut against her as well.
Adverse Inference Instruction
Denied. An adverse inference instruction under Rule 37(e)(2) — a jury instruction that destroyed or withheld evidence would have been unfavorable to the party responsible — requires proof that a party acted with intent to deprive the opposing party of evidence. The court found zero evidence of such intent by the City, and noted that the City is not a party to this action in any event, making such an instruction nonsensical.
Rule 11 Warning Regarding Fictitious Citations
The court addressed a separate issue raised by the City: Ms. Kasso's submission of fictitious and inaccurate legal citations, consistent with unchecked use of AI-generated legal research. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 imposes a personal, non-delegable duty on all filers — including those representing themselves — to verify the accuracy of their legal citations. The court identified specific examples: - Klingenstein v. Pettit, 297 F. Supp. 2d 435, 439 (S.D.N.Y. 2003): does not exist. - In re Application of Time, Inc., 1999 WL 804090 (cited as S.D.N.Y.): the actual case is from the Eastern District of Louisiana, and the quoted language does not appear in it. - Miller v. Pruneda, 236 F.R.D. 277, 282 (N.D. Tex. 2006): the actual case is from 2004 in the Northern District of West Virginia and does not support Ms. Kasso's proposition. - Additional real cases cited for propositions they do not support.
The court acknowledged that AI tools can be useful to self-represented litigants but emphasized that pro se litigants are not exempt from Rule 11's requirements. The court issued a formal warning that further use of fictitious or inaccurate authorities will not be tolerated, and cited cases in which courts have imposed serious consequences — including sanctions and dismissal — for AI-generated fake citations.
Read the full 20-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.