BISMARCK — North Dakota legislators heard testimony on a bill that would overhaul the way guardianships and conservatorships are overseen — something the judiciary has been working toward for more than a decade.

Senate Bill 2029

would create an Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship with broad powers to oversee such matters statewide. The office would license and maintain a registry of professional guardians and conservators, set regulations and policies, oversee legal and disciplinary actions, and manage state funding for guardianship and conservatorship programs.

Those in support of the bill believe it will address the shortage of guardians and conservators facing North Dakota while enforcing greater accountability. Those in opposition to the bill are concerned it will syphon funds from existing programs.

Chief Justice Jon Jensen said the creation of the Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship was a main priority of the legislative session for the state Supreme Court during his recent

State of the Judiciary address.

According to South Central District Judge Cynthia Feland, who testified in favor of the bill, the state currently has no licensing program for professional guardians and conservators, making it difficult to monitor who is claiming to be a professional and what their qualifications are.

President of the Guardianship Association of North Dakota Margo Haut, who testified against the bill, said that guardians are already required to obtain a national certification from the Center of Guardianship Certification and must be certified by the state courts system to act as a guardian in North Dakota.

Feland said the licensing component of the bill is important because complaints against guardians and conservators are handled on a case-by-case basis in the court system. Feland said this has created instances in which a professional guardian is removed from a case for misconduct without any mechanism to investigate other cases they are handling. The proposed bill would fix this, according to the judge.

“If we now have a procedure for licensing and we can remove them, then notification goes throughout the state to all of the district courts that this person’s license has been revoked,” she said.

If a guardian’s license is revoked, Feland said the Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship would be able to find other guardians to step in and take over the cases from the de-licensed guardian.

Donna Byzewski is the program director of the corporate guardianship program for people with intellectual disabilities at Catholic Charities North Dakota. She said during her neutral testimony that she was concerned the budgets of guardianship services would be devastated by legal costs when guardians were brought before the proposed office’s review board.

Byzewski did, however, say the bill would give the court tools to protect people in the case of exploitation or neglect by a guardian and remove the offending guardian in a timely manner, something that has taken months — if not years — to accomplish previously.

Feland said the judiciary is already preparing to implement the office should the bill pass.

“I don’t wait for this stuff to pass. We’re doing it now. So as we are speaking right now, we are actually putting together the rules for the Supreme Court to create these things” Feland said. “This is a problem that’s been there for over a decade and is getting worse. So the best way, then, to resolve it is to start doing these things right away.”

The U.S. Supreme Court settled a North Dakota voting rights case Monday, leaving in place two majority-Native American subdistricts challenged as unconstitutional.

“I’m glad that it’s finally been resolved,” said Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation who represents one of the subdistricts. “It’s very important that we’re able to represent our needs at the table.”

The lawsuit, brought by two non-Native North Dakota residents, alleged that the subdistricts are racial gerrymanders — meaning the Legislature established them based predominantly on the racial makeup of their communities, rather than looking at other criteria like geography, population size or the political interests of residents. The plaintiffs argued the Legislature relied heavily on anecdotal evidence, not legitimate research, when it created the districts.

The plaintiffs claimed the subdistricts violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by strengthening the voting power of Native American residents at the expense of constituents who aren’t Native American.

Native Americans gain representation in North Dakota Legislature as Republicans keep supermajority

The Legislature established the two subdistricts in 2021. District 4A follows the boundaries of the Fort Berthold Reservation, while District 9A includes the Turtle Mountain Reservation and some surrounding communities.

A three-judge district court panel found in 2023 that the map was constitutional.

The panel wrote that even if the Legislature did look to race when making the map, federal courts have previously found that states may consider race in a “narrowly tailored” capacity when drawing district lines to comply with the Voting Rights Act. 

Unsatisfied with that decision, the plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court to send the lawsuit back to a lower court for further proceedings, or to accept the case.

The high court on Monday dismissed the appeal of District 9A and affirmed the district court’s decision on District 4A. The court did not explain its reasoning.

Robert Harms, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, called the decision disappointing.

“The troubling aspect of this whole case is that the North Dakota Legislature didn’t have in front of it any statistical analysis,” he said Monday.

The lawsuit was filed by Charles Walen and Paul Henderson, both of whom are former district chairs for the North Dakota Republican Party, Harms said. Walen last year successfully ran as a Republican for a District 4 state Senate seat. 

The boundaries of District 9A and District 9B changed for the 2024 election after a federal judge imposed a new map following a separate voting rights lawsuit brought by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. 

The MHA Nation, Finley-DeVille and MHA citizen Cesar Alvarez joined Walen and Henderson’s lawsuit on the side of the state, arguing that the Legislature had gathered sufficient evidence to warrant the creation of the subdistricts.

That included testimony from tribal representatives, information about the use of subdistricts for Native American reservations in South Dakota and previous redistricting litigation, according to a brief filed by the MHA Nation, Finley-DeVille and Alvarez.

MHA Chairman Mark Fox testified during the redistricting process that candidates favored by Native residents of District 4 had been repeatedly defeated by the district’s white majority.

The plaintiffs disagreed. In one response, they argued that even before the subdistricts were created, voters in District 4 and District 9 were able to elect Native lawmakers to the Legislature, and that therefore the subdistricts are not necessary. The brief cites Rep. Dawn Charging and Sen. Richard Marcellais as two Indigenous lawmakers elected in District 4 and District 9, respectively.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a December brief advised the Supreme Court against considering the case.

In an unusual move, North Dakota came out against the district court’s ruling, despite that the court had ruled in the state’s favor. In a memo filed this spring, the state said that the Legislature did not rely on race as a predominant factor in the redistricting process, and that the district court was wrong to rule that such behavior would be permissible in any circumstance. The state asked the Supreme Court to send the case back to district court for further proceedings.

“We said before and we maintain now that race was not the predominant motivator for the redistricting,” North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said Monday.

The Supreme Court has taken up two other voting rights cases challenging a majority-Black district in Louisiana as racial gerrymandering.

In a 2023 voting rights case, Allen v. Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Alabama had violated the Voting Rights Act when it created only one majority-Black district, finding that this unlawfully weakened the power of Black voters in the state.

BISMARCK — A Fargo insurance agent facing the largest fine ever imposed by the North Dakota Insurance Department says the state agency misrepresented what led to the fine.

Tyler Bjerke, a representative for Midwest Heritage Insurance and Valley Crop Insurance, has been fined $136,500 and his license to sell insurance in North Dakota has been placed on probation for four years for violating a law that limits gifts to clients and potential clients, according to the order finalizing the penalties.

The per person limit means insurance agents can give a gift of $200 to a client couple, said Insurance Department spokesperson Jacob Just.

The Insurance Department said Bjerke gave 182 pub-style tables to clients and potential clients valued at $213.95.

Bjerke doesn’t dispute the cost but contends that he originally ordered the tables from China in July 2022 at a price of $199.95 per set. He said in September 2022, he was told that the price had gone up to $213.95 due to port fees and tariffs.

He said he tried to cancel the order but would have lost a $20,000 deposit.

“I made a business decision based on $14.95 over the gift allowance and thought that no one would care about $14.95,” he said in the email. “This was $2,720.90 over the limit and I was fined $136,500, $750 per violation.”

Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread said in a statement that licensed insurance agents aren’t allowed to give high-value gifts to consumers “because it essentially boils down to bribing clients for business.”

“Insurance should only be sold based on the competitive coverage options and premiums offered by an agent, not by those who can offer kickbacks in exchange for business,” Godfread said.

Bjerke said the pub tables were for clients with “man-caves, shops, lake homes, etc.” as a way to thank clients he considers family members.

“For the insurance commissioner to mention that gifts are kickbacks in exchange for business is a gross misrepresentation of what occurred,” Bjerke said.

The Insurance Department also found that Bjerke hosted a concert by the band Sawyer Brown in February 2023 with free admission to clients and potential clients, with the value also exceeding the $100 limit. Prosecution of that case was deferred as a condition of Bjerke’s license being placed on probation.

Bjerke said the band was booked as part of a company and client celebration after a day of training sessions that included updates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers crop insurance programs, and U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., a crop insurance advocate. He said there were no tickets to the event.

Bjerke said he tried multiple times to meet with the Insurance Department and complied with their request for four years of company records.

He said the Insurance Department has a vital role to play in creating an equal playing field for North Dakota insurance agents, but he said he believes his agency was targeted.

Jeff Kleven, executive director of Independent Insurance Agents of North Dakota, said these kinds of violations should be taken seriously and can hurt the reputation of the industry.

Kleven said every licensed insurance agent is aware of the rules on gifts.

“It’s part of the test,” he said.

This story was originally published on NorthDakotaMonitor.com