Tribal court bars Leech Lake candidate despite vacated felony conviction

A tribal court has barred a longtime elected official of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe from running for office because of a past felony conviction that was later overturned. Last month, four of five judges on the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s Election Appeals Court voted to decertify Arthur “Archie” LaRose as a candidate for secretary-treasurer, the second most powerful elected office on the north central Minnesota reservation, according to the Minnesota Reformer.

The appeal was brought by three candidates now running for the position LaRose held for nearly two decades before his removal in 2022. Judges ruled that the tribe’s election ordinance bars candidates who have “ever been convicted of a felony of any kind,” even though LaRose’s 1992 third-degree assault conviction was vacated by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in 2024, according to the Minnesota Reformer. In a dissent, Judge Michael Harralson of White Earth wrote that continuing to treat the conviction as a felony is “a manifest injustice.”