MINNEAPOLIS – A federal judge has ruled that Minnesota’s sex offender treatment program is unconstitutional, but has deferred any immediate action to await further proceedings on a remedy.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank largely sided with the more than 700 residents who were civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program after they completed their prison sentences.

Their lawyers argued during a nearly six-week bench trial in February and March that the program is unconstitutional because nobody has ever been fully discharged from it, even those thought to be at low risk of committing new crimes.

The state says it has improved the program, including moving more patients through treatment and perhaps toward provisional release.

Frank is calling on Minnesota government’s top leaders to personally appear in court to help come up with an alternative structure to a sex offender confinement program.

Frank listed Gov. Mark Dayton, House Speaker Kurt Daudt and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk among those he wants to take part in a remedies phase that will start on Aug. 10. Frank says stakeholders must fashion a suitable remedy to avoid having the entire program be eliminated and resulting in the release of civilly committed offenders currently in secure facilities.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the judge lays out more than a dozen conditions for a restructured program, including that less-restrictive alternatives be implemented and new evaluation and discharge procedures be developed.

Throughout his 76-page ruling, Frank says elected officials have been reluctant to modify the indefinite confinement of more than 700 sex offenders out of political fear. But Frank says “politics or political pressures cannot trump the fundamental rights” of those in the program.

He stressed that the U.S. Constitution “protects individual rights even when they are unpopular.”

Gov. Mark Dayton says there won’t be immediate changes to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in response to a federal judge’s ruling that it’s unconstitutional. In a statement that was released Dayton said, “We will work with the Attorney General to defend Minnesota’s law.”

Dan Gustafson, the attorney who brought the class action suit on behalf of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program clients said he is not surprised by the judge’s ruling. He said that he advised his clients to be patient because the remedies will take time to create and not all of the clients will be getting out.

Offenders who are ordered into the program are confined to one of two MSOP treatment facilities — Moose Lake or St. Peter. The treatment program was set up in the 1990s when current civil commitment laws went into effect, but it has been under fire for rarely letting anyone out until recently.

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