BNSF Railway Company v. City of Wadena

Background

BNSF Railway Company operates a rail line through both the City and County of Wadena, Minnesota. On two separate occasions in late 2025, an electrical malfunction caused BNSF's railway safety arms to lower and block three of the City's intersections — once for approximately one-and-a-half hours and once for approximately one hour. Each time, a BNSF employee eventually repaired the malfunction and the blockage ended.

Minnesota's Blocked-Crossing Statute, Minn. Stat. § 219.383, prohibits railway corporations from blocking a public road or street that crosses a railroad track for longer than ten minutes. A first violation is a petty misdemeanor; a second or subsequent violation is a misdemeanor. The Wadena Police Department cited BNSF for each of the two incidents. Defendant Kyra Ladd, the Wadena County Attorney, is prosecuting BNSF in Minnesota district court for both blockages. Those state criminal proceedings remain pending.

On January 26, 2026, BNSF filed this federal lawsuit against the City and Ladd (Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was also originally a defendant but was voluntarily dismissed by BNSF on April 16, 2026). BNSF seeks declaratory relief (a court declaration of the parties' legal rights) and injunctive relief (a court order stopping enforcement), arguing that two federal statutes — the ICC Termination Act ('ICCTA') and the Federal Railroad Safety Act ('FRSA') — preempt, meaning legally override, Minnesota's Blocked-Crossing Statute.

The Motions to Dismiss

Both the City and Ladd moved to dismiss BNSF's claims without prejudice, invoking a jurisdictional doctrine called Younger abstention (named for Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971)). Under that doctrine, federal courts must ordinarily refrain from interfering with pending state criminal proceedings and certain state civil proceedings, except in special circumstances. The defendants raised a facial challenge to the court's subject matter jurisdiction — meaning they argued the complaint itself, on its face, showed the federal court should abstain.

The Younger abstention analysis proceeds in three steps: (1) Does the state proceeding fall within one of three categories where abstention is appropriate? (2) Does the state proceeding satisfy the so-called 'Middlesex' factors (named for a Supreme Court case)? (3) Even if both prior questions are answered yes, does an exception to abstention apply? The parties did not dispute the first two steps — the underlying state proceedings are criminal prosecutions, which fall squarely within Younger's core. The entire dispute turned on the third step: whether an exception to abstention applied.

The Facially Conclusive Preemption Exception

The Supreme Court has recognized a possible exception to Younger abstention where a federal preemption claim is 'facially conclusive' — meaning preemption is readily apparent without the need for detailed analysis. New Orleans Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of New Orleans (NOPSI), 491 U.S. 350, 367 (1989). The Eighth Circuit (the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over this district) has noted but not formally adopted this exception. Judge Frank found that the exception does exist, relying on pre-NOPSI Eighth Circuit reasoning that Younger's premise — a legitimate state interest — is absent when the state action has been preempted by federal law, as well as post-NOPSI adoption by other circuit courts.

The City argued that even if the exception exists, it should not apply to underlying state criminal proceedings (as opposed to civil ones). The court rejected that distinction, finding no court had drawn such a line and noting that other courts have applied the exception even in cases involving criminal proceedings.

ICCTA Preemption Analysis

Both the ICCTA and FRSA contain express preemption clauses — explicit statutory language displacing state regulation. Express preemption analysis focuses on the plain wording of the preemption clause. The court began and ended its analysis with the ICCTA.

The ICCTA's preemption provision, 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b), states that the Surface Transportation Board's jurisdiction over transportation by rail carriers — including over their operations — 'is exclusive,' and that the remedies under federal law 'preempt the remedies provided under Federal or State law.' Under the framework adopted by the Eighth Circuit in City of Ozark v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 843 F.3d 1167 (8th Cir. 2016), two categories of state statutes are facially preempted by the ICCTA: (1) state or local permitting or preclearance that could be used to deny a railroad the ability to conduct operations, and (2) state or local regulation of matters directly regulated by the Surface Transportation Board, such as the construction, operation, and abandonment of rail lines.

Judge Frank concluded that Minnesota's Blocked-Crossing Statute falls into the second category. By setting a maximum time a railway corporation may block a crossing, the statute regulates train movement decisions — which is regulation of the operation of rail lines. The court found no further factual development was necessary; the preemption claim was facially conclusive from the plain text of the ICCTA and the Blocked-Crossing Statute alone. The court cited persuasive authority from the Fifth and Tenth Circuits addressing this precise issue: BNSF Ry. Co. v. Hiett, 22 F.4th 1190 (10th Cir. 2022), and Friberg v. Kan. City S. Ry. Co., 267 F.3d 439 (5th Cir. 2001).

Disposition

Because a facially conclusive preemption claim is an exception to Younger abstention, and because federal courts have a 'virtually unflagging obligation' to hear cases within their jurisdiction, the court denied both motions to dismiss. The case will proceed in federal court. The court did not reach the merits of whether the ICCTA or FRSA actually preempts the Blocked-Crossing Statute — it found only that the preemption question is sufficiently clear-cut that abstention is not warranted.