Barna, Guzy & Steffen LLP (BGS)
A municipal defense firm stepping into a private dispute, now positioned at the center of a federal civil rights action.
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Barna, Guzy & Steffen LLP (BGS) is a Minnesota law firm that has historically represented municipalities, public entities, and law enforcement in a defensive posture. Its practice is rooted in defending local governments against liability rather than pursuing constitutional remedy.
In Strickland v. Ramsey County, BGS extended that defensive posture to an arena where it does not belong: a federal civil rights case arising from a private harassment restraining order (HRO). This marks a striking expansion of their municipal defense role into the protection of private litigants who leveraged public courts for retaliatory ends.
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By stepping into a case driven by ADA retaliation and systemic due process defects, BGS blurred the line between municipal defense and private interest protection. The effect is to launder irregular court practices through a firm best known for insulating municipalities from accountability.
“A municipal defense firm should not be carrying water for a private HRO into federal court.”
This move is not neutral: it shifts the weight of private misconduct into a public defense framework, shielding acts that fall outside the scope of municipal authority. In doing so, BGS helped perpetuate the same structural imbalances that disabled litigants are already forced to fight at their own expense.
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BGS’s litigation strategy in this matter has not been to clarify or cure defects but to normalize them. By filing alongside Ramsey County and its referees, BGS aligned itself with unsigned orders, altered notices, and irregular filings, treating them as enforceable and legitimate.
The strategy echoes its municipal defense posture: focus on procedural shields, immunity doctrines, and abstention arguments, while ignoring the substantive misconduct that brought the case to federal court in the first place.
Why It Matters
The presence of BGS in this litigation underscores how deeply retaliation and obstruction have been institutionalized. A firm whose portfolio centers on defending municipalities now appears in federal court defending a private HRO, effectively elevating a personal dispute into a publicly shielded matter.
This not only distorts the role of municipal defense firms but also demonstrates how private retaliation can be laundered into the authority of the state. For pro se litigants, the message is chilling: even a personal harassment order can attract the resources of municipal defense to exhaust and silence those who speak up.