Court Opinion

ID: 9673056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:05:25.96441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.997316
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Little Six, Inc., applied for and was granted a certificate of authority to transact business in Minnesota as a foreign corporation in accordance with Chapter 303 of Minnesota Statutes. For more than 50 years before the incorporation of Little Six, Inc., Minnesota has accorded registered foreign corporations the following powers:
After the issuance of a certificate of authority by the secretary of state and until cancellation or revocation thereof or issuance of a certificate of withdrawal, the corporation shall possess within this state the same rights and privileges that a domestic corporation would possess if organized for the purposes set forth in the articles of incorporation of such foreign corporation pursuant to which its certificate of authority is issued, and shall be subject to the laws of this state.
Minn.Stat. § 303.09 (1994) (emphasis added). Gavie complains of violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, Minn.Stat. ch. 363 (1994). The requirements of the Minnesota Human Rights Act are applicable to the state and its political subdivisions as well as to private employers, and I can see no earthly reason for permitting a foreign corporation to depart the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) reservation and to violate with impunity the human rights of Minnesota citizens while transacting business in Minnesota.
That Indian tribes retain a unique sovereignty is beyond dispute. When the members of the tribe reside on the reservation and confine their commercial activities to the reservation, the State of Minnesota may not and does not subject the tribe’s members to the state’s tax laws. Brun v. Commissioner of Revenue, 549 N.W.2d 91 (Minn.1996). When, however, the sovereign becomes a merchant, his license to carry on his commercial activity on foreign soil and to carry on his trade with the inhabitants of the foreign state is expressly subject to the laws of the licensor. Little Six, Inc., like any other foreign corporation, must be deemed to have accepted the certificate of authority to transact business in Minnesota subject to its express limitations.
As Chief Justice John Marshall put it in 1812, although the “military force which supports the sovereign power and maintains the dignity and independence of a nation” is not subject to the jurisdiction of another sovereign nation whose borders the military force crosses under license to do so, “[a] prince, by acquiring private property in a foreign eoun-try, * * * may be considered as so far laying down the prince, and assuming the character of a private individual,” that he subjects the property to the territorial jurisdiction. The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch) 116, 145, 3 L.Ed. 287 (1812).
In modern parlance that statement means that if a commercial entity enters a commercial arena outside its own territory pursuant to a Minnesota certificate of authority to transact business as a foreign corporation, the foreign corporation is subject not merely to Minnesota’s jurisdiction, but it is subject to the laws of Minnesota and the defense of *301sovereign immunity is, at the very least, of no more avail to the foreign corporation than it is to the state and its political subdivisions.
Therefore, I would reverse the lower courts and remand for vacation of the summary judgment in favor of Little Six, Inc.