The Minnesota Attorney General Tuesday sued a Fridley used car dealership for violating consumer protection laws, alleging it fraudulently sold more than 3,000 vehicles and targeted Spanish-speaking customers.

Midwest Car Search and its owner, Scott Spiczka, misrepresented cars as “certified” when they were not and illegally tacked on expensive service contracts without buyers’ consent, Attorney General Keith Ellison claims in the suit.

“This is a long-term systemic pattern of deception targeting customers with — though not always — limited English skills,” Ellison said at a Tuesday press conference.

Midwest Car Search marketed cars to Spanish-speaking consumers through advertising campaigns in that language. Sales negotiations were conducted in Spanish, but sales documents were in English “and bore no relation to promises” made in Spanish, Ellison’s office claims.

Spiczka, who is named in the suit, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The suit covers used car sales made from 2017 through 2022. The Attorney General’s office said it investigated the company after receiving many consumer complaints.

In some cases, the suit claims, consumers “quickly encountered fundamental problems with [Midwest Car Search’s] vehicles, sometimes on the same day of their purchase, rendering their investment worthless. “

Midwest said in online advertisements — and directly to customers — that its cars were all “certified” as mechanically sound, the suit said.

Under state law, a car must meet several conditions to be certified, including that it be inspected by a third party for deficiencies — and come with a warranty. The Attorney General’s Office claims Midwest Car Search routinely sold vehicles as “certified” that came with no warranties and no inspection reports.

“In many cases, [car buyers] were stuck with lemons,” Ellison said.

Manuela Enriquez of Burnsville said at the press conference that she bought a lemon from Midwest Car Search in 2019. Soon after purchasing it, she said, she found the brakes didn’t work.

“I took it to a mechanic, and he asked why I bought this thing — it didn’t work, and I shouldn’t be driving it,” Enriquez said. She asked Midwest Car Search to fix the brakes, she said, but the company refused.

Enriquez said in an interview that she asked to test drive the car before buying it, but was told she could only ride along as a passenger; a dealership employee drove.

Midwest Car Search also allegedly added expensive service contracts to its car sales without telling consumers. The average service contract cost more than $1,500, according to the lawsuit.

The Attorney General’s Office said it reviewed 200 individual car purchases from Midwest Car Search, and all of them failed to properly disclose a service contract.

The suit filed in Anoka County District Court alleges several consumer law violations, including deceptive trade practices, false advertising and fraud. The suit also claims Midwest Car Search used the moniker “Coches MN” to market to Spanish-speakers without registering the business name with the state.

Ellison is seeking an injunction against the company’s allegedly illegal practices, restitution to customers and civil penalties.

ROCHESTER — Les Schwab Tire Centers are rolling into Minnesota this year and one of its new stores is slated for northwest Rochester.

The Bend, Oregon-based chain with 526 stores is planning to build a 10,600-square-foot complex 3833 Cascade Creek Dr NW, near the intersection of 19th Street Northwest and West Circle Drive.

It will be built on open land next to Altra Federal Credit Union and near the

Tierra Encantada daycare center.

It is across 19th Street Northwest from

Zen Fusion Hibachi & Lounge.

Les Schwab Centers sell and install tires as well as offering general auto maintenance like oil changes, brake repair, batteries and more.

The company has filed building plans for the project and has hosted a neighborhood meeting to discuss it. It is not known when construction will begin.

Les Schwab Tire Centers are based mostly in 10 western states, but the 72-year-old company is targeting Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota for new locations in 2024.

Les Schwab’s first Minnesota center is expected to open soon in Moorhead. Other proposed Minnesota locations in Apple Valley, Worthington and Otsego are in development.

This will be the latest project in the

Creekside development,

the open land on the southwest corner of the intersection of 19th Street Northwest and West Circle Drive. Edina-based

Venstar LLC mapped out Creekside in 2007.

Tierra Encantada and Altra Credit Union were the first to build in that area.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — As a queer and out youth, Shae Ross was alarmed when she heard that conservative groups were organizing in her community to ban books dealing with sexuality, gender and race. So she and her friends got organized themselves, and helped persuade their school board to make it much harder to remove books and other materials from their libraries and classrooms.

Ross, an 18-year-old senior in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, is glad to see that her governor and leaders in several other states are fighting the trend playing out in more conservative states where book challenges and bans have soared to their highest levels in decades.

“For a lot of teenagers, LGBT teenagers and teenagers who maybe just don’t feel like they have a ton of friends, or a ton of popularity in middle or high school … literature becomes sort of an escape.” Ross said. “Especially when I was like sixth, seventh grade, I’d say reading books, especially books with gay characters … was a way that I could feel seen and represented.”

Minnesota is one of several Democratic-leaning states where lawmakers are now pursuing bans on book bans. The Washington and Maryland legislatures have already passed them this year, while Illinois did so last year. It was a major flashpoint of Oregon’s short session, where legislation passed the Senate but died without a House vote.

According to the American Library Association, over 4,200 works in school and public libraries were targeted in 2023, a jump from the old record of nearly 2,600 books in 2022. Many challenged books — 47% in 2023 — had LGBTQ+ and racial themes.

Restrictions in some states have increased so much that librarians and administrators fear crippling lawsuits, hefty fines, and even imprisonment if they provide books that others regard as inappropriate. Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.

Conservative parents and activists argue that the books are too sexually explicit or otherwise controversial, and are inappropriate, especially for younger readers. National groups such as Moms for Liberty say parents are entitled to more control over books available to their children.

But pushback is emerging. According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries, several states are considering varying degrees of prohibitions on book bans. A sampling includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont, though some in conservative states appear unlikely to pass. One has also died in New Mexico this year.

One such bill is awaiting Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s signature in Maryland. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill last month that sets a high bar for removing challenged materials, especially those dealing with race, sexual orientation and gender identity. A version pending in New Jersey would protect librarians from civil or criminal liability.

Some proposals are labeled “Freedom to Read” acts.

“That’s what’s so critical here. The voluntary nature of reading,” said Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey. “Students can choose to read, not read, or totally ignore everything in this library. No one is asking them to read a damn thing.”

Hickson recalled how parents first suggested her book collections contained pedophilia and pornography during a school board meeting in 2021. She watched the livestream in horror as they objected that the novel “Lawn Boy” and illustrated memoir “Gender Queer” were available to students and suggested she could be criminally liable.

“Tears welled up, shaking” Hickson said. ”But once my body got done with that, my normal attitude, the fight side kicked in, and I picked up my cell phone while the meeting was still going on and started reaching out.”

Book bans have been a sore point for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. The Minnesota Senate passed his proposal this month. It would prohibit book bans in public and school libraries based on content or ideological objections, and require that the key decisions about what books will or won’t be offered be made by library professionals.

The state House is considering an approach with more teeth, including penalties and allowing private citizens to sue to enforce it.

“I’m working with stakeholders, with the Department of Education, librarians, school districts and their representatives,” said Democratic Rep. Cedrick Frazier, of New Hope. “We’re working to tighten up the language, to make sure we can come to a consensus, and just kind of make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”

Because of her activism, Ross, a student at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, was invited when Walz went to Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul last month to view a display of books banned elsewhere. The governor called book bans “the antithesis of everything we believe” and denounced what he depicted as a growing effort to bully school boards.

At a House hearing last month, speakers said books by LGBTQ+ and authors of color are among those most frequently banned. Karlton Laster, director of policy and organizing for OutFront Minnesota, who identifies as Black and queer, said reading their works helped him “communicate my hard feelings and truths to my family and friends,” and helped him come out to his family.

Kendra Redmond, a Bloomington mother with three children in public schools, testified about efforts to push back against a petition drive by conservatives to pull about 28 titles from the city’s school libraries.

Pushback from Ross, Redmond and others succeeded. The Bloomington School Board last month made it much harder to seek removals. Parents can still restrict access by their own children to material they deem objectionable.

Many challenges in the district came from the Bloomington Parents Alliance. One of its leaders, Alan Redding, recalled how his son’s 9th grade class was discussing a book a few years ago when graphic passages about date rape were read aloud in class. He said his son and other kids were unprepared for something so explicit.

“They were clearly bothered by this and disgusted,” Redding said. ”My son absolutely shut down for the semester.”

Minnesota Republican lawmakers have argued that instead of worrying about book bans, they should be focusing instead on performance in a state where just under half of public school students can read at grade level.

“Every book is banned for a child that doesn’t know how to read,” said GOP Rep. Patricia Mueller, a teacher from Austin.

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Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press reporters Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this story.