The Minnesota Star Tribune recently published a new article on a recent landmark settlement in a lawsuit brought by voting rights advocates against a private security contractor, Atlas Aegis, for illegal voter intimidation in Minnesota.

The advocacy groups sued Atlas Aegis, a Tennessee-based company, for voter intimidation after it posted a job advertisement last October seeking U.S. special operations forces veterans to protect the polls from “Antifas” intent on “destroying the election sites.” The federal lawsuit, filed by the Minnesota chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and League of Women Voters, alleged that Atlas was trying to “sabotage a free and fair election” by intimidating would-be voters in Minnesota.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel approved a consent decree on Tuesday that stipulates Atlas shall not “deploy armed agents within 250 feet of, or otherwise monitor, places in Minnesota where ballots are being counted, recounted, or canvassed,” or otherwise intimidate voters. The company, “in the normal course of their business,” can send armed or unarmed security to Minnesota, but it must provide written notice 25 days in advance if the security will be visible within 250 feet of a polling location during an election, according to the agreement.

The article also quoted FSFP Board Chair and Senior Legal Advisor Ben Clements on the importance of the landmark settlement and its impact on future work challenging voter intimidation:

It’s illegal…It will not be tolerated. And the courts of this country will block you and hold you accountable if you threaten to or actually engage in that type of activity.

Last year the Council on American-Islamic Relations–Minnesota and the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, represented by lawyers from Free Speech For People and two private law firms, sued Atlas Aegis and its chairman, Anthony Caudle, for a plan to hire and deploy armed ex-soldiers to polling sites in the state.

Read the entire piece here.

Learn more about the settlement here.