A Minnesota state senator will have to get guidance from Republican leadership on how to “appropriately” email his colleagues after distributing graphic videos of gender transition surgery to fellow senators last year.

After that coaching, Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe,  will have an ethics complaint against him dismissed, per an agreement reached Wednesday by the two Republican and two Democratic-Farmer-Labor members of the Senate Subcommittee on Ethics.

“Even though we can do something and have no ill intent it can still have profound impact on an individual,” said ethics committee Chair Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis.

Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, filed a complaint against Gruenhagen in 2023 after the senator sent an email to all his Senate colleagues containing a link to what he called “graphic and disturbing” videos of gender transition surgery.

Sen. Glenn H. Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Senate)

“Attached are videos documenting mutilating transgender surgeries on minor children,” read the email, which contained a link to Google video search results for transition surgeries.

In her complaint, Maye Quade said Gruenhagen’s distribution of the video links, which contained visuals of genitals in a surgical setting, “egregiously violated norms of Senate behavior.”

At a Tuesday hearing on the complaint, Gruenhagen said the email was in relation to a DFL-backed bill protecting minors’ access transgender medicine.

Maye Quade said it was inappropriate to share the content regardless of the context and argued the videos did not have a direct relation to the bill. Further, his sharing of the link demonstrated insensitivity toward LGBTQ people, she said.

Members of the ethics committee tabled the complaint Tuesday night after two hours of debate so they could move on to an ethics complaint relating to state Sen. Nicole Mitchell, a Woodbury DFLer accused of felony burglary.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Sen. Andrew Mathews, R-Princeton, said the agreement does not address whether Gruenhagen had actually violated Senate ethics rules, but he was happy with the outcome.

“It is a good thing to get this resolved, give the path forward to have this dismissed and not have this hanging over the work that the ethics committee needs to do,” he said.

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